


Ride the Coattails

by Lili_Ceedle



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Anal Play, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Romance, Banter, Blood and Injury, Brief choking, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Cunnilingus, Depression, Developing Relationship, Drama & Romance, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fights, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Food Kink, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, Inspired by Music, Interracial Relationship, Night Terrors, Post-Canon, Post-Game(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Relationship(s), Rimming, Romance, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Tension, Smut, Softcore Porn, Spanking, Valenveira - Freeform, Valeveira
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:07:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29025471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lili_Ceedle/pseuds/Lili_Ceedle
Summary: Carlos and Jill's lives changed forever after they met in Raccoon City, during one of the worst disasters in modern history. As the company responsible for the disaster loomed over their lives, it couldn't stop them from growing closer together. However, opposition comes in many forms...
Relationships: Carlos Oliveira & Jill Valentine, Carlos Oliveira/Jill Valentine
Comments: 42
Kudos: 39





	1. Faire un Cauchemar

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic ever! Love me some Valeveira and until Capcom comes to their senses and makes them canon, fanfics and fanart shall reign supreme. This story will start off slow enough, set the pace and give you the feels, then prepare for some smutty shenanigans! Couple things that you'll notice right away: 1) I really love music and so you'll see a lot of that portrayed throughout the story, 2) I chose tags that I thought made sense, but if they don't then feel free to nicely point me in the right direction, 3) I tried to follow canon as much as possible, but if I mess up someplace then feel free to also nicely point me in the right direction. All set? Great--thanks for reading!  
> P.S. Also, disclaimer: I don't own any of the music that I mention, no copyright infringement intended, yada yada, I mean no harm! Otherwise, if you don't know any of the music that I mention, feel free to YT it, fun times <3

_Sometimes at night, I cannot sleep_

_I think of you with revering_

_But like an ancient melody, you're beautiful but melancholy_

_Girl, if I could, don't you know I would_

_Take the pain away from my Valentine_

_Tell me why, why you never smile_

_What can I do to get through to you_

_My funny Valentine, I'd do anything just to see you smile_

\-- _"_ My Valentine," Carl Thomas (2000)

October 2nd, 1998--12:22AM

“No...no, it can't be..."

Jill Valentine knew that she had to be having a nightmare, she just had to be. There was no way that she was still in her studio apartment in Raccoon City--it had gone up in flames, had been completely obliterated less than twenty four hours ago. Yet here she was, perched on the edge of the mattress and staring as a vicious thunderstorm pelted her windows with harsh rain. Jill had no recollection of how she even got here...did she even remember falling asleep? Her tv flashed a screen of black and white static from the right corner of the room...this seemed oddly familiar. Suddenly, Jill heard a loud knock at her front door-- _tap, tap, tap!_ She immediately sprung to action, searching for her firearm that she kept secured in the desk on the left side of her room, but coming up short. ‘Where the hell is it,’ she wondered, ‘and who the hell is that?’ She barely had time to register another thought when the loud knocking came again-- _tap, tap, tap_! “Alright alright, I heard you the first time,” Jill called out as she made her way to the door. She unlocked the deadbolt, then the doorknob, and opened the door to an empty hallway.

“What the hell,” Jill wondered aloud, “where’d they go?” She dared to step out of the doorway and look in both directions, searching for her mysterious guest. The lights in the hallway were all on, and yet a sense of foreboding made Jill’s skin crawl. She couldn't hear anything--not at first--until the exit door at the end of the hallway burst open, a lightbulb in the ceiling closest to the door simultaneously bursting. A dark and extremely tall figure stood there looming in the doorway, wind and rain pouring in behind it--it didn’t seem to notice however, since it slowly began to stalk in Jill’s direction. Jill froze, her pulse racing and her throat suddenly feeling drier than Death Valley. ‘No...no, it can’t be…’ those earlier words echoing over and over again in her head like a baneful chant or a taunt. This had to be a joke, right? That thing stalking toward her was long since dead; even if she hadn’t killed it with a powerful rail gun, it had to have gone up in flames with the rest of RC after the decimating blast that fateful Autumn morning. So if that was the case, then why did this all feel so real? Why was this creature now stalking toward her?

Overhead light bulbs burst over it and shrouded it in darkness as it got closer and closer. And why the hell did it feel like her legs were rooted into the earth all of a sudden? ‘Please, please no…’ she thought as she yelled in its direction, “no way--you’re already dead! Do you hear me you fucking bastard?!” It yelled a reply that she knew all too well, one that meant that this must be a dream, but still felt all too real as the sound echoed down the hallway and made Jill want to jump out of her skin, “STAAAARS!” Just like that, the invisible roots turning Jill’s legs into tree stumps shrank and withered back into the ground as she turned on her heels and dashed back into her apartment, slamming and locking the door behind her, for all the good it would do. “Please wake up, please wake up,” she pleaded with herself as she leaned her forehead against the door and winced, hoping that when she opened her eyes, the image around her would fade. 

The sounds from the hallway had quieted now, only to be replaced with loud tapping sounds at her windows. _Tap, tap, tap!_ Jill’s eyes flew open, her sense of dread returning as she slowly turned around and looked towards the source of the new noises, and every hair on the back of her neck stood up as she beheld the ghastly site before her…

They were all peering at her through the windows--Forest, Richard, Joseph, and Kenneth. Kenneth stood next to the reanimated corpse of Joseph and viciously pounded on a window until it shattered, with Forest and Richard following suit at the other window. Four of Jill’s former S.T.A.R.S teammates all tumbled into the apartment, one hideous form after another, lumbering to their feet once they made contact with the floor. ‘How the fuck...how did they get up here?!’ In a panic, Jill ran for her bathroom door, realizing that it was too late to keep searching for her firearm. Just before she made it to the bathroom doorway, her front door burst open, falling off of its hinges while knocking her backwards and onto the floor. Nemesis stood in the doorway now, looming as it did near the exit door, only this time it didn’t advance on her. Rather, it turned its massive head toward her, its hideous mouth turned up at the corners as if it was wickedly smiling at her.

The infected corpses that were once her comrades were getting closer. Jill stood up on wobbly legs and tried once again to duck into the bathroom. Just as Jill crossed the threshold of the bathroom doorway, someone grabbed her by her shoulders and flung her backwards with inhuman strength. Jill’s breath left her lungs with an accompanying groan as her back once again hit the ground, expecting to see Nemesis looming over her; however, nothing could’ve prepared her to see this face--the face of the one who'd tried to warn her about Nemesis in the first place. Brad. He growled and bared his teeth at her, faster and more feral than the others who were still lumbering towards them. When Jill spoke, it came out as more of a whisper, “B-Brad?” 

“Sooorry,” the thing that was once her friend and former teammate replied. His voice sounded more like the creature he was becoming than the man that she once knew.

The reply would have knocked the wind out of Jill if Brad hadn’t already knocked her to the ground. She froze once again, like phantom roots had gotten a hold of her arms as well as her legs now, rooting her in place. Brad must’ve just turned: he was stronger, faster, more aggressive than the others, and somehow still had enough cognitive ability to talk. The others were closing in on her fast! Brad seemed to show some sort of hesitation after he spoke, his body hunched over almost into a crouch and he looked away from her, his infected body involuntarily twitching like a nervous tick on someone who is just itching to make a move.

Jill felt a dull ache form in her chest and a slight sting in her eyes, as tears began to form in their corners. What could she do? It was bad enough seeing the decaying, growling monsters that her former teammates had become, but seeing Brad struggle like this was just too much. They were the ones who were dead, yet it felt like she was sinking six feet under while she watched them all lumber toward her. The final nail in the coffin came when she heard a strange noise from the main doorway--a noise that resembled...no. This was a joke, it had to be. It sounded like laughter...and it was coming from where Nemesis was standing. “What...the fuck?”

Jill felt like she was losing her mind at this point. None of this was making any sense! That fucking thing couldn’t laugh, couldn’t do anything but growl, shriek like a banshee and cry out ‘S.T.A.R.S.’ as it followed her like a shadow across the city. No, this had to be a dream, a nightmare, some twisted figment of her imagination that just wouldn’t let up and give her some reprieve. Jill had had enough of this hell, so she threw her head back and yelled up at the ceiling, “Wake up! Wake the fuck up NOW!”

As if it was the final push that they needed, the infected versions of her teammates suddenly converged on her all at once, grabbing at her legs and torso with their putrid fingers. Brad dropped all semblance of hesitation and lunged for her arms, grabbed her by the wrists and growled in her face while gnashing his teeth, trying to reach her neck. Jill fought as hard as she could, but the others were tearing into the rest of her body, fingers and teeth tearing past the denim of her jeans and the cotton of her tank top to rip into the flesh on her legs and bury into her stomach, like a pack of famished wolves tearing into the belly of their prey. The acrid stench of undead flesh mixed with the scent of her own fresh blood. Jill was screaming bloody murder, writhing in pain and silently praying to whatever god would listen to let her wake up from this never ending nightmare, and all the while the sounds of guttural growls, gnashing teeth and Nemesis’ malevolent laughter in the background almost drowned out her bloodcurdling cries. 

Then, she heard it...like a beacon in the darkness, a deep voice that was shouting almost as loudly as she was screaming. The pressure on Jill’s wrists didn’t let up and she still felt scratches on her flesh, but she tried to clamp her jaw and grind her teeth to damper her cries enough to try and listen to that voice. Whoever it was was outside of the room, outside of this hell, outside of her tortured mind. What was it saying? The other sounds slowly began to fade, the sounds of feral, hungry creatures and evil laughter now drowned out by her own wails and that other, deeper voice finally dragging her up and out of the abyss--“Jill, goddamnit WAKE UP!”

Jill was still thrashing around when she finally woke from her nightmare, her eyes flying open and the panic of the hellish dreamscape slowly dissipating. She finally stopped flailing as she tried to catch her breath, realizing that she wasn't in her apartment. As Jill let her mind shake off the fog of sleep and recollection slowly dragged her back into the present, she accessed her surroundings; she was in a queen sized bed with torn up sheets, raw, scratched up arms, sore fingers, and Carlos Oliveira holding her wrists.

“Jill...holy shit,” Carlos exclaimed as he stared down at her, fear in his tired eyes and a worried expression on his face. “Are you ok?”

Jill was still panting, trying to reply but her throat was too dry and scratchy. She swallowed, trying to lubricate her parched throat and leaned back onto the sweaty pillow, “I…’m fine, I mean...I don’t know.” Jill looked down at where Carlos still held her wrists, his grip having gently eased up after she stopped thrashing around. “Did I--I scratch you?” she asked him in a voice that was still too raw.

“No,” he warily replied, “but you sure as hell marked your arms up pretty bad.”

Jill looked toward her arms and Carlos finally released her wrists, affording her the opportunity to survey the damage that her nails had done. Thankfully, she couldn’t see any blood, but there were various scratches--long lines of angry crimson running four in a row--along each arm, slightly stinging as she touched them with her wet and clammy hands and causing her to hiss out as she gingerly touched them. “Whoa, hey, careful,” Carlos said as he almost reached out to hold her arms again, “hang on a second.” He got up from her bed and went over to the bag of medical supplies to grab some first aid ointment.

Jill slowly sat up, cautiously peeling back the ripped covers to check her legs for the same scratches; thankfully, as she surveyed the flesh below the hem of her pajama shorts, she didn’t see the same damage. Apparently, the same could not be said for the sheets. “Shit,” Jill whispered as she carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed, planting her feet on the soft, faded burgundy of the carpet and letting the sensation ground her. ‘I feel carpet under my feet, that’s one’, she thought to herself. 'I see a bed next to mine, two. I smell faint cigarette smoke from this room--someone before us--three. I hear Carlos searching for something in a plastic bag, four. I taste…' Jill reached for her water bottle on the wooden nightstand and twisted the cap off, taking several gulps of spring water before Carlos walked back over to her with the ointment and a Kleenex in hand. “Five,” she exhaled after one last gulp.

“What’d you say Jill?” Carlos asked as he sat next to her. Jill looked up at him as if he had startled her, “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just a thing I learned in mandatory therapy after the mansion, supposed to help with anxiety--hell, maybe it’s the only useful thing I learned.” 

“Ah, I gotcha, something to help you focus, keep you grounded and in the moment,” Carlos replied, surprising Jill once more as he removed the cap on the ointment, placing it on the bed behind them, while gently taking her left hand in his and using the Kleenex to apply the cream to each set of scratches. 

“How’d you know that?” Jill continued to be surprised by how perceptive and intelligent that Carlos was, wondering if he intuitively knew about the importance of grounding oneself in their line of work or whether he had been to therapy at some point himself.

“This pretty little head knows a lot,” Carlos quipped as he smirked, his attention on thoroughly coating her scratches.

Jill’s look of surprise was quickly replaced with a look of annoyance. “You know, I was just starting to think that you’re smarter than you look,” she said.

“I wouldn’t want to disappoint you,” he replied, looking at her face as he smirked this time.

Jill smiled back despite his ridiculous sense of humor, realizing that although her arms still stung and her fingers were still sore, his gentle treatment of her fresh wounds didn’t hurt a bit. She also recognized how Carlos simply holding her hand caused an uncanny warmth to spread through her fingers. Despite feeling cold and clammy when she woke up from her nightmare, as he stroked her knuckles with his thumb, that warmth had somehow made its way to her belly and slowly started to burn lower. Jill looked away from his smirking face, hoping that such warmth wasn’t making her blush.

“There’s a smile, see? There’s a method to my madness.” Carlos had finished applying the ointment to Jill’s left arm and was now working on the right one. “Speaking of madness, my dreams aren’t exactly a cakewalk either, but this was my first time seeing the kind of carnage we saw back there. But you? You survived one disaster only to live through an even bigger one--one that took your home away.” Jill’s smile had vanished, and she struggled to look him in the eye again; instead, she chose to stare down at a part of the burgundy carpet that looked like it had suffered a cigarette burn or two.

Carlos continued, that anxious look he had when she woke up returning as he talked, “When I heard you screaming a few minutes ago, scared the shit outta me, honestly more than anything I’ve seen or heard this week. Thought we were under attack, until I saw you attacking yourself...I’m sorry about that by the way. I hope I didn’t make it worse by grabbin’ you like that, I just saw you scratching and…” Carlos’ lips pressed into a hard line as he slowly exhaled through his nose. He wondered how those bastards at Umbrella slept at night knowing what they knew, doing what they did to innocent people. They were responsible for wiping out an entire city, plus his own platoon--friends and brothers in arms. They had sent a hideous science project monstrosity after Jill and her friends, and Carlos had to watch from afar as she fought that thing alone, only able to make himself useful once she was already infected by the damn thing. And then there was Nicholai, that fucking snake of a traitor who he should’ve questioned sooner, like Jill said Mikhael had done on the train before the monstrous creature caused it to derail. Maybe he and Tyrell could’ve gotten to Dr. Bard sooner, or maybe he could’ve at least stopped Nicholai before he got the drop on him at the helipad. Maybe then Jill wouldn’t have had to choose between shooting at him and shooting the fucking traitor…

“Can I sleep in your bed?”

Somewhere between damning Nicholai to hell and hoping that Umbrella ate shit, Carlos’ guilt and dark thoughts came to an abrupt halt. He looked at Jill’s face, stunned, not sure whether or not it was his mind playing tricks on him. Did she really just ask him that? “Wh-what now?” 

Jill had stopped staring at the carpet and was staring at him with an inscrutable look on her face, when she repeated the question. “I said, can I please sleep in your bed? I know it’s small, but my sheets are a mess now,” she turned and looked behind her to accentuate that fact. “That out to be an interesting find for housekeeping,” she said, sighing heavily and looked back at him once more. “Like you said, my nightmares are apparently worse than yours; but, your voice seemed to be the only thing to pull me out of this one. So, maybe sleeping next to you would help too.” 

Carlos felt like he had whiplash without the physical strain. One minute he’s soothing Jill’s wounds and silently cursing everyone responsible for making her life--their lives--a living hell, and the next minute she wants to share his bed. For the first time in his two decades on planet Earth, he was at a loss for words. “Um, well...I...ok,” he said at last, “Sure, whatever you need, Jill.”

Without another word, Jill slipped out of his reach and went over to grab a long sleeved shirt out of the bag of new clothes Carlos had purchased earlier that day, covering her scratches and ointment, before heading over to the side of the bed closest to the nightstand. Carlos got up a second after Jill went for her bag, turned off the light and climbed into his bed, pulling back the covers enough for her to slip under them with him. Jill faced away from him, but she still allowed herself to relax back into his warm body, a big spoon to her little spoon. Carlos cautiously wrapped a large arm around Jill’s waist, holding her close to him.

Jill sighed heavily, closing her eyes and trying to calm her nerves as her pulse began to race for a different reason. The nightmare had left her feeling chilly and uncomfortable, while laying with his much warmer body was like having a heavy, heated blanket to anchor her in a way that her anxiety trick from therapy could never do. Maybe she did have one last thing to say after all. “Hey, Carlos…”

“Hmm?” He hummed in response.

“Thanks,” she all but whispered through tired lips.

Carlos smiled as he closed his eyes, “Told you I got your back, Super Cop. Literally at this point.”

Jill would’ve rolled her eyes if they were still open. 


	2. Got Your Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath of Raccoon City...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Making progress folks! This chapter is a prelude to chapter one, explaining how our lovers got to the motel and what led up to the events in said chapter. Next one is gonna be for the softcore people, because who says that romance is dead? Thanks for reading!

_I've got your back and though it's stacked against us_

_I_ ' _ve got your hand, it's us against consensus_

_And I will burn the people who hurt you the worst and I will not learn_

_'_ _Cause I am too young and too dumb to consider the terms_

_Of breaking the law and I'll curse the day that they return..._

\--"Bloodsport ‘15," Raleigh Ritchie (2015)

October 1st, 1998--8:31AM

Carlos landed the helicopter in the woods near a small town just south of Springfield, IL. Before he and Jill went into town, they wiped their gear of fingerprints as much as possible--Jill insisted on it--before throwing most of it into a sack and burying it as far away from the chopper as possible. The pair discreetly made their way into town with pistols as their only weapons, Jill with her custom piece from Kendo, keeping them concealed on their waists along with as much ammo as they could safely carry in their pockets. The town was eerily quiet for this early in the morning, and it caused enough apprehension in Jill that she started to wonder if they had walked (flew) out of the frying pan and into the fire. “Where is everyone?” Jill asked as she nervously glanced around. “Why is no one out here?” Carlos looked around for himself, his hawk-eyed stare falling onto a flyer stapled to a wooden telephone pole. “Hey, check this out,” he said as he walked up to the flyer to get a closer look at the message typed in bold, capitalized print:

EMERGENCY TOWN MEETING!  
COUNCIL OF DACHSHUND

IN RESPONSE TO THE RECENT DESTRUCTION OF RACCOON CITY, COUNCIL MEMBERS INVITE YOU TO JOIN US AND PUBLIC SAFETY OFFICIALS FOR A COMMUNITY TOWN HALL TO DISCUSS A COURSE OF ACTION. ALL K-12 SCHOOLS WILL REMAIN CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL AND BUSINESSES ARE TO REMAIN OPEN AND AVAILABLE.

OCTOBER 1, 1998  
8:15AM  
DACHSHUND CITY HALL  
1251 LINCOLN AVE NW  
DACHSHUND, IL 62000

“Well, that explains it I guess," Jill sighed with some relief. "This place is small enough that anyone up at this hour is probably there already.” Anyone not at the town hall would’ve been at home with their families, since there was no way that local schools would be open so soon after a nearby disaster.

“Hopefully that lessens our chances of someone seeing us like this,” Carlos responded, referring to their disheveled states.

They were outsiders, strangers to this small town, so they stood out regardless of their bruises and dirty, blood stained clothing. No doubt that Raccoon City’s demise had made at least national if not international news by then, and Jill just knew that there had to be a quarantine zone set up somewhere for any other survivors who had escaped before the blast. Local authorities in surrounding cities as well as military personnel hopefully would cooperate in these zones, most likely detaining survivors and snuffing out any possible spread of the virus by any means necessary. That last thought made her stomach turn, but the government had blown up an entire city to try and eradicate the terrifying plague that it knew very little about. They had no idea what they were dealing with; would response teams in quarantine really be able to keep the virus from spreading? “Let’s get out of sight before our luck runs out,” Jill said as she started walking again, her sense of caution outweighing her fatigue.

“I hear you, Super Cop,” Carlos replied as he walked beside her.

About ten minutes later, the pair finally found a motel that was conveniently located in between a pharmacy and a liquor store. Thanks to Nemesis and his sudden intrusion into her life, Jill didn’t have any identification or cash with her, so it was Carlos who booked them a twin room. Jill was covered in even more dirt and blood than Carlos, so she stood just outside of the lobby and out of site from the front desk. There wasn’t much that stood out about their accommodations: off-white walls, a burgundy rug that had faded in some spots around the room, two queen sized beds with a large nightstand between them, a tv sitting on a corner stand near a desk and chair, and a small closet right next to the bathroom door. Jill’s only concern as she walked over to the window was whether or not the white curtain was thick enough for privacy. Honestly, what kind of motel wouldn’t have black out curtains? Didn’t anyone like to sleep in around this sleepy little town? She briskly pulled the curtains together, dimming but not completely blocking out the morning sunlight.

Carlos took the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and put it on the outside of the door, then locked it and walked over to the bathroom. “A pharmacy and a liquor store--looks like our luck didn’t run out after all, huh?”

“Guess not,” Jill mumbled back as she went over to the bedside lamp on the nightstand and turned it on. She gingerly sat on the edge of the bed closest to the bathroom and faced the now curtained window, sighing heavily as she placed one hand on a knee and ran the other one’s fingertips through her hair.

Meanwhile, Carlos was standing at the bathroom sink trying to wash off as much dirt and grime from his face and arms as quickly and thoroughly as possible. His plan was to grab supplies--first aid kits, aspirin, new clothing, food, water, etc.--from that pharmacy, no doubt an essential business, and then if he had any funds left over he would pay a visit to that liquor store (not so essential, but he hoped that they were open). Once he was satisfied with his cleaner reflection in the mirror, Carlos toweled off and joined Jill back in the main room. “I’m gonna grab some things from that store outside, hopefully they’ve got some sweats to change into. Anything specific you need?”

“No, get whatever you think we need,” Jill replied in a dismissive tone as she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, absently staring at the closed curtains. Was that a shadow passing by? Did someone just walk past the window?

Carlos wasn’t offended by it of course, he simply gave an easy half smile as he walked over to her; “So, you’re not gonna tell me what size you wear?”

‘Oh for fucks sakes,’ Jill thought to herself as she rolled her eyes. “Alright fine, either a six or an eight, depending on what I’m wearing.” She thought about her still healing cuts and bruises, ones that had to look worse under her current clothes. “Better make that the bigger size just in case,” she added, hoping that Carlos would take the hint.

“No problem, Super Cop, I’ll take care of it.”

The warm way that Carlos said this rolled over Jill’s flayed nerves like sweet maple trickling down rough tree bark, snapping her attention away from the window and onto him. She stared up at his face and into his deep, dark eyes as they reflected the light from the bedside lamp, reminding her of the maple trees in the State Park. Chris, Barry and Brad had all dragged her out there to go hiking one fall, which she had complained about until she saw the way that the maple trees created a beautiful gradient of yellow, orange and red leaves, resembling flames as the wind whipped them around. Flames…

“I’m...gonna take a shower…” Jill dragged her gaze away from his as she stood up and walked to the bathroom, brushing past him on the way and swearing she felt a jolt of static electricity...of something...as her arm briefly made contact with his. “I’ll try and hurry back so you’ll have something to wear then,” Carlos replied while he watched her walk away, his tone almost as soft as before. Once Jill had gone into the bathroom, shutting the door a bit too harshly, he left out and got to work.

Jill stood up in the shower for as long as she could, washing the filth off of her skin and watching as the dirt and blood disappeared down the drain. She tried to clean as many cuts and burns as she could reach, hissing and grinding her teeth through the worst of the pain. When her tired legs and even more tired mind could take no more, she turned away from the spray of water and sank to the floor, cradling her knees close to her chest. After the mansion, Jill had spent many nights like this, letting the water bombard the muscles in her back and shoulders to ease the tension held there. Today however, the shower barely made a dent in those muscles; she was too wound up from anxiety and the whirlwind of thoughts in her head.

There had been a plan before that fateful last day in RC, one that her friends and former S.T.A.R.S members Chris Redfield, Barry Burton and Rebecca Chambers had already started. Once Jill left the city, she was supposed to meet up with the others in Europe, and so she had almost finished packing up her belongings--some belongings to take and others to donate to the Raccoon City Orphanage. She would call Rebecca first thing the next morning, that was the next move. The sooner they knew that she was still alive, the better. Perhaps one of them could even wire them some money, knowing that she couldn’t access her accounts without her debit cards or IDs. It would be an interesting conversation since she’d have to tell them about Carlos. Carlos...Jill tried to force herself to focus on her next course of action but her thoughts kept traveling back to him. Damn those eyes of his! She hadn’t noticed them this way before, even while he was shamelessly flirting with her in the city. And why the hell had the way he looked at her made her nostalgic of all things?! On the other hand, it didn’t seem fair to drag him into this mess, into her convoluted plan for justice (vengeance) on Umbrella for the blood on their hands; yet, hadn’t he already been dragged into it when Umbrella treated his platoon like they were cannon fodder?

Two sides of her mind were still battling each other when Jill suddenly heard a knock on the bathroom door, not too loud but still enough to have her scrambling to stand back up. “Jill, I um, have your clothes right here,” Carlos said through the closed door.

“Just a second,” Jill yelled back, “I’m coming!”

She quickly shut off the faucet and wrung her hair out before stepping out of the shower. Then, she grabbed a clean towel to wrap around herself before whipping open the door. Carlos stood there with a large grocery bag in his hand as Jill stood in front of him; he barely had a minute to register the way the towel simultaneously clung to her chest and was almost a little too high on her thighs to leave anything to the imagination. Jill also froze in that moment, her eyes registering his gaze as it raked down and then back up her body with a flabbergasted look on his face. When his eyes once again fixated on hers, she tore her gaze away to look at the bag he held, giving him a hurried “thanks” and grabbing the bag before quickly closing the door once again.

As Jill got dressed in the bathroom, Carlos tried to steady his pulse as he slowly lowered himself onto his bed, sighing heavily and placing one hand on a knee while running the other one’s fingertips through his hair.

………

About ninety minutes later, after Carlos had taken his turn to get cleaned up and tossed their discarded clothing into a dumpster outside, he accessed their injuries to see if any were too severe to treat with a simple first aid kit. To his surprise, the worst of these injuries were his flesh wound from when Jill shot at him and Nicholai and some large bruises on Jill--one just under her ribcage and two on her thighs. She’d insisted on applying the pain relieving cream on them herself. He’d had the foresight to get her pajama shorts because he figured that she’d have a bruise or two under those jeans...on those long, beautiful legs of hers. Those legs had the advantage of the jeans as a buffer to any sustained injuries, so there had been minimal cuts and scrapes to them; however, the gashes, scratches and first degree burns peppered on Jill’s upper arms and back took some time to patch up, and the worst of those had her hissing through her teeth as he tended to them. “Sorry,” Carlos apologized in earnest, “almost done with this one.”

“It doesn’t hurt as bad as when you started, for obvious reasons,” Jill professed as she tilted her third beer bottle towards him, before taking another swig from it.

“Can’t say I blame you Super Cop, which is why I also bought rum,” he said as he gave a little nod towards the clear bottle with the white label. “Bacardi’s not my favorite but in a town this size, I’ll take it.”

“I’m not that picky,” Jill replied, “I just need something to knock me out for at least a few hours.”

“Well, I’d say you’re a knockout for me but you might actually knock me out, so…”

Jill gave him an exasperated look. “Maybe I’ll do that anyway, tired or not.”

“Hey now, you gonna attack the guy who just patched you up?” Carlos stopped dabbing at the last of the worst cuts on her shoulder and held his hands up in surrender.

Jill shook her head and huffed, “Haven’t decided yet--besides, at least I patched you up before I started in on this six pack.”

“Yeah, thanks for that,” Carlos said as he eyed the bandage that hid his gunshot wound, “and, uh, thanks for not killing me back there too.”

He went back to dabbing antiseptic ointment on her cut while trying to keep his hands steady, trying not to show how visibly upset the memory made him. Jill shouldn’t have had to make that decision; if he’d been able to stop Nicholai before she got to the helipad then she could’ve avoided such a tense confrontation, and maybe they would still have that vaccine sample. Or maybe, if he’d caught onto Nicholai’s suspicious behavior sooner then he could’ve prevented Bard from being killed. So many blind mistakes, and his guilt wouldn’t let up.

“It’s not your fault you know,” Jill said suddenly, as if she could sense what he was thinking. “You did the best you could under the worst circumstances, and...I’m really sorry that I shot at you.” ‘Now if only I could take my own fucking advice for a change,’ she thought viciously to herself before shutting that thought down like a circuit breaker.

Carlos gave a heavy sigh as he bandaged the cut, “You don’t have to do that. I should’ve trusted my instincts from the start; I should’ve trusted you. Maybe, maybe then I could’ve stopped that bastard in his tracks before he forced you to shoot at us.” His voice had a slight edge now, like a razor blade that had gone dull from overuse.

Jill’s voice however, fueled by the alcohol and underlying rage that had been festering inside of her since the mansion, was like an Obsidian blade as she bit out, “Cut. That. Shit. Out.” Jill turned to look at him and as Carlos stared at her with wide eyes, he thought that the fury in her eyes was aimed at him, until she spoke again. “Stop blaming yourself,” she explained, her voice keeping that sharp edge but fatigue keeping it from raising into a shout. “That bastard Nicholai was only a part of the problem. It’s his goddamn employers, _your_ employers who caused all of this, who are probably padding themselves on the back right now, despite all the blood on their hands.”

Jill tilted her head down with a humorless, bitter laugh before she looked back up and continued by giving Carlos a summary of the mansion incident; after that, she confessed her own misguided feelings of guilt. “I blamed myself for the others dying, maybe we all did, all five of us...four,” she corrected as she thought of her friends in Europe and the horrifying memory of how she’d lost Brad. Jill's eyes began to sting. “Apparently a part of me disagrees, because I see their faces in my nightmares--too many nightmares to count now--but I fight like hell to shut that guilt trip off when I’m awake. I saw the mansion go up in flames, then RC went up in flames, so what’s next? Will those soulless pricks be happy when the whole damn world burns as long as they can make a profit?” She practically spit out that last word, sniffling and absently swiping at a tear trickling down her cheek. “Guilt won’t do a fucking thing for people like us except to make us vulnerable, which is exactly what they want us to be. So stop it, anyway that you can, kill it before it gets you killed and you become just another body that they’ve burned.”

Jill downed the last of the frothy liquid in her bottle in order to chase away any remaining tears. Carlos felt his own eyes stinging at this point, and he swallowed thickly in order to keep his own tears at bay. So much pain in Jill’s voice, in her expression, in her eyes, and all that he could do was patch up her wounds and empathize with her. Carlos wished that he could yank the pain out of her like a thorn, then take her away from all of this and pretend that they were running away to start a new life, far away from death and destruction. He also empathized with her rage, not quite for the same reasons, but he had lost people in Raccoon City too--had fought and bled and been treated like a pawn on a chess board. Yeah, he had something to seethe about. “You’re absolutely right, Umbrella is to blame for all this shit. ‘Guess bitching over what I could’ve done isn’t helping either of us.” He paused, steeling himself for what he wanted to ask next--“so then, what was your plan for when you left the city?”

Jill tapped her forefinger against the bottle as she considered how much of the plan to divulge to him, when she finally replied, “I have to contact my friends, see about getting out of here. Then, come up with a plan to take those pricks down.”

“Take me with you.”

Jill had been staring at her empty bottle as her tears dried up, when she suddenly whipped her head up. “Wait, what?”

His steely resolve felt even stronger now that she’d stopped crying, so he went on. “I made a promise to keep you safe, Jill, and I always keep my promises. As long as those soulless pricks are around, then I’ve got your back. Besides, who else do you know that worked for them and might know something useful to help you take them down, someone you can trust? Listen, I know that trusting me is a lot to ask, but I have every reason to see those assholes pay for what they've done, so can you please trust me with this?”

There was a momentary silence between them as Jill processed his words, and it felt like that moment could manifest into an eternity as it stretched on and on. Finally, she broke the silence with, “Ok.”

“Wait, really?” Now it was Carlos’ turn to be shocked.

“You think I didn’t have the same thing in mind earlier?” Jill tried to remain as objective as possible with her explanation. “You're right, you might have information that could help us, plus you’re the only one who Umbrella might not actively be searching for. Besides, aside from the TV you’re my eyes and ears outside of this room.” The look in her eyes had considerably softened by this point, especially as she remembered the most important thing that he’d done for her. “I was close to dying so many damn times, and you risked your life to save me more times than I can count. Just saying thank you...it seems inadequate. So...yeah. If I can trust you with my life, then I can trust you with this.”

Another moment of silence came to pass between them, but instead of apprehension it held a different type of energy, one that felt lighter and warmer, one that was...could one dare to say hopeful? An easy smile appeared on Carlos’ face, his smoky quartz eyes meeting Jill’s blue topaz gaze, and Jill wore a ghost of a smile on her own face, until she broke said gaze with a lazy yawn. Carlos chuckled, “Sounds like we should continue our lil’ heart to heart after some sleep.”

“Don’t call it that,” Jill lazily replied, tossing the empty bottle into a nearby trash bin before she leaned back on her bed and looked towards the ceiling. “We can go over the details later, after I make some phone calls.”

“As you wish, m’lady,” Carlos said with a smirk on his face as he put the medical supplies back into the grocery bag.

“Don’t say that either,” Jill grumbled as she got under the covers, refusing to look at him and acknowledge the joyous look on his face.

“As you wish, Super Cop,” he amended, a full on grin replacing the smirk.

Jill grumbled something unintelligible before she turned on her side, facing away from him and shut her eyes, willing a relatively peaceful slumber to claim her at last.


	3. l'Imparfait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afterglow <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several things here folx: 1) Sorry in advance for the long chapter, but I didn't want to split it up and mess up the flow here--promise it'll be worth it! And 2) Proud to announce that I'll be working on the Valeveira zine as an artist, joining many other incredible artists and writers whose work you enjoy on here! Proceeds for the zine are going to a great cause, so come check it out! I'll be sharing more info. about it on Tumblr--my handle is @poemtomyself--but for now, click this link to learn more: https://valeveirazine.tumblr.com/

_I wanna lift you up into the light that you deserve_

_I wanna take your pain into myself so you won't hurt_

_Don't you dare surrender_

_Don't leave me here without you_

_Cause I could never replace_ _your perfect imperfection_

\--"Imperfection," Evanescence (2017)

This wasn’t happening...not again.

Jill was standing in a room that she didn’t recognize, and she didn’t remember how she had gotten there. She knew that this must be another dream. Warily, she wondered what monstrosity would grace her with its presence now, a zombified Nicholai? Would Nemesis return and bring her ravenous friends back as well? Would she turn and have to shoot herself again? Or, would she have another version of the agonizing dream at the hospital, where she watched helplessly as an infected Carlos turned in front of her? 

Upon further inspection, this room looked deceivingly comfortable: it was a bedroom with cream-colored walls and a soaring thirteen foot ceiling, all lined with timber frame architecture, a large, stone fireplace in the corner, and a king sized bed with a massive, intricately carved wooden headboard. Quite frankly, the room was lovely, but not as lovely as what Jill was standing next to at that moment. A seven foot long, six foot high bay window with an oval shaped bench under it took up a large portion of the wall near the fireplace, and it overlooked the view of a snow covered mountain town, with structures that resembled tall cottages and roads that wove throughout the hills and valleys of the mountainside. The view reminded Jill of a German town close to the French border where her father used to take them in the winter, and she suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia roll over her as she took in the pitched rooftops and sparkly blankets of snow, the early morning sunrays turning the sky into a mélange of yellow and robin’s egg blue. 

Jill propped a knee up onto the bench and crossed her arms over her chest defensively, slightly leaning forward as she gazed down at the town. This was a confusing contrast from her previous nightmare, and Jill wondered what the catalyst was that inspired this dream to be so different from her night terrors. “What am I doing here,” she wondered aloud, “waiting for this pretty little town to catch fire?” 

“Well, it’s your dream, guess that’s up to you.”

“What the--”Jill hopped back from the window so fast that she nearly kicked the bench. 

When she whirled in the direction of the voice, Jill found Carlos standing behind her with his hands in his jean pockets--those jeans and a leather belt were the only things that he wore. He smirked at her reaction, “What’s wrong, afraid of your own shadow?”

“Carlos, wh-what...what are you doing here?” 

“Told you, it’s your dream, you tell me,” he replied as he slowly approached her. “Maybe your mind’s tryin’ to tell you something.”

“What, that I should be reading Playgirl when I’m not running for my life?” Jill instinctually guarded herself by crossing her arms over her chest once again. This version of Carlos chuckled as he stood in front of her, still giving her about a yard of personal space.

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Oh, sorry, wrong choice of words there,” he said as he smiled a sheepish grin after his insensitive joke.

Jill huffed indignantly and shook her head, “So now my subconscious is making bad jokes? Great, just what I needed after surviving the apocalypse.”

“You’re just lookin’ at your own perception of me, of _him_. So maybe you should ask yourself if my bad jokes really bother you, or why I’m standin’ here like this,” he shrugged to emphasize his bare shoulders.

“Alright then, fine” Jill sighed as she took a step towards him to show some semblance of courage at least, almost closing the gap between them. “Maybe I find your, _his_ jokes, a bit endearing after all that we’ve been through. Takes either a special type of crazy or a special type of demeanor to still be laughing and smiling so easily right now--”

“Ha, careful now, you might hurt his feelings with that one,” Dream Carlos chuckled as he interjected, “but you have a point.”

“--and maybe I do find him attractive, ok? I mean, besides his ridiculous sense of humor and Chia pet hair, I’d have to be crazy myself to not see that he’s a good looking guy. Plus, he saved my life and he seems to give a shit about me.”

“You’re getting closer…what else?” Dream Carlos said, nodding as if waiting for her to continue. 

“What do you mean?” Jill thought that she’d gone over every possible reason for this seemingly random dream.

Then, Dream Carlos took a hand out of his pocket and lifted it to just above her shoulder. Jill stiffened at first, but he knew better than to assume it was ok. “May I?” he inquired before he made his next move. Jill pondered letting him do whatever he was planning, reminding herself that this was just a dream and that some part of her mind had conjured up this little scenario for a reason. She kept her arms crossed in her guarded stance, but gave her consent with a nod of her head. Dream Carlos gently touched her shoulder, turning her around to face the window. “How does this view make you feel?” he asked.

Jill was still processing how even in a dream his touch thrilled her when she turned her attention back to the snowy town below them. “I feel...nostalgic, peaceful, serene…”

“Getting closer…” he murmured as he leaned his face in towards her ear.

Jill tried to ignore how this caused butterflies to flutter in her belly, choosing to focus on what this memory made her feel; she pretended that it was the only reason for the smile creeping onto her face. “My dad used to take us here on vacation, at least that's what I thought it was. Turns out he may have been keeping a low profile, since his lockpicking wasn't strictly legal. Probably the most useful thing he every taught me," she chuckled. It was fun to pretend like she was really sharing this memory with Carlos. "We explored the town, ate homemade kaiserschmarrn at our favorite restaurant, went sledding, and got to know the townsfolk.” As Jill reminisced, Dream Carlos gently stroked her shoulder with his large thumb and placed his other hand on her opposite arm, resting his chin against the back of her head. “I haven’t been back here since I left France, I really miss this place.” 

“What happened when you left, Jill?” he pressed her. “What feelings do you miss the most?”

By the time Jill turned around to face him, her smile had been replaced by a look of longing. As she stared into those eyes that reminded her so much of the maple trees from happier times, it finally dawned on her what he, or rather what her subconscious, was trying to make her admit to herself. “I...I miss...I felt safe, comfortable, happy,” she finally said. Jill looked down towards the floor then, realizing that she’d been denied those feelings--safety, comfort, happiness--for months. After the bloodbath in Arklay back in July, Jill had lost almost everything that mattered to her: most of her friends and teammates, respect as an officer and once highly acclaimed member of S.T.A.R.S after Chief Irons suspended her, her privacy, thanks to the apartment remaining under constant surveillance, peaceful dreams and peace of mind as the horrors of what she’s lived through relentlessly haunted her, and had almost lost her life too many times to count. Now, she was essentially homeless, unemployed, and the only people who didn’t want her dead were a world away in Europe...with the exception of one person. 

Had she convinced herself that he’d only saved her out of obligation, that he was just a flirt? Carlos had been objective, albeit adamant about joining her on her quest to bring Umbrella down; however, he constantly showed a level of care and compassion that wouldn’t make any sense if he didn’t truly care about her. Maybe she had sensed it all along, which is why she kept deflecting his attention or distracting herself from feeling whatever spark passed between them when they were close. There was always the chance that she could be wrong and Carlos could naturally have a nurturing and caring demeanor with everyone, but there was only one way to find out.

“You thinkin’ what I am?” Dream Carlos asked as one hand found her waist and the other cupped her face. “Yeah,” Jill responded, unfolding her arms and running them up his chest, “time to wake up.”

“As you wish, Super Cop,” he whispered, before leaning down and capturing her lips with his in a warm and tender kiss. That warmth spread from Jill’s lips down to her belly button, making her head spin and causing her nerve endings to tingle under his touch. That lightheaded feeling followed her as she felt herself being pulled out of that blissful dream and became acutely aware of the faint sound of music. She was laying on her side, and someone larger and warmer lay against her back, lightly stroking her hair out of her face. 

When Jill finally opened her eyes, she rose to the hazy light of the morning sun as it filtered through the motel curtains. The music that she heard came from the alarm clock on the nightstand, which had turned the radio on as it went off at its scheduled time; apparently, the previous guests had been early risers too. It was 7:22 in the morning, and the radio was playing “Linger” by The Cranberries. Jill observed all of this for a few seconds before she slightly turned to look behind her, startling the culprit behind her previous hair touching. “Oh, hey...sorry, I was just, I-I thought you were still asleep. I didn’t mean anything by it, I just saw you shifting and thought you were dreaming again…” Carlos clumsily stumbled out as he tried to explain himself. Jill didn’t bother responding with words; instead, she reached back to wrap her hand around the back of his head, pulled him towards her, and kissed him.

The kiss was just a long press of lips to lips at first, an invitation to see how Carlos would respond to her advances. Fortunately, Jill wouldn’t have to gauge his response for long, since as soon as she pulled away and their eyes met, he smiled brightly before he brought his lips down to hers and returned the kiss in earnest. She turned fully to face him now, the kisses deepening until their lips parted enough for their tongues to meet. Jill’s subconscious had imagined that kissing Carlos would be warm and sweet, but her dream had been nothing compared to this. The static that she felt while brushing past him the other day jolted between them like lightning now, white hot and making any nerve endings that still lingered in sleep mode suddenly leap to attention. Before she knew it, Jill had wrapped a leg over his and rolled over to climb on top of him. Carlos instinctively wrapped his arms around her to keep her steady, but couldn’t help vocalizing his surprise. “Whoa, well, good morning to you too,” he chuckled as looked up at Jill and tucked her hair behind her ear. 

“I have a theory to test out,” she confessed. “I want to know if you want me, or if you’re just a flirt.”

Jill had once again caught Carlos by surprise as realization dawned in his maple eyes. “You...you want to know how I feel about you,” he said, staring up at her with an incredulous look on his handsome face.

Jill reached up to cup his bearded jawline and run her thumb along his bottom lip. “I wanted to know if you’re all talk, Carlos. So, are you down for this or what?” she asked in a low voice that a sex hotline operator would applaud.

‘Holy shit,’ Carlos thought to himself. ‘This better not be some kinda cruel dream. Time to put up or shut up!’ To Jill he replied, “Well, since you put it way...” lust now clouding his own voice. 

He didn’t say another word as he wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her into a hungry kiss that had their tongues dancing in circles, their bodies undulating against each other to the steady rhythm of their tongues. Jill’s hand slid down to rest on his chest and the other weaved into his hair. Carlos reached around with the hand that wasn’t grasping at her neck and slipped it under her shirt, running it up her spine and pressing his palm between her shoulder blades like he was trying to somehow bring her even closer to him. This was supposedly in vain however, as Jill suddenly broke the kiss to sit up, gliding her fingers down his chest along the way. Confusion flashed over his features for barely a second before Jill grabbed the hems of both her long sleeved shirt and tank top in unison to yank them both up and over her head. She tossed them to the floor and looked down at him, her newly exposed skin almost glowing in the muted sunlight from the window.

Carlos was completely mesmerized, and he stared up at her in awe. Gone was the downtrodden and sharp tongued woman who he patched up the other day, and here stood a goddess hovering over him, whole and complete. She was all battle scars woven into smooth skin, and his rising pulse almost had him feeling feverish. Had she always been this alluring, this breathtakingly beautiful? No, beautiful was an understatement. She was absolutely divine. 

The warrior goddess suddenly folded her arms over her bare breasts to shield them from his view as she turned her head and huffed, feeling awkward. “Well, fucking say something!” 

“I...would you believe me if I said I’m speechless?” Carlos panted out. “My god, Jill…”

Jill turned her head back towards him and looked at him for a beat, suddenly feeling more exposed than ever before. Then she looked away once more, chuckling humorlessly. “What, you leave your wits back in RC?” she teased. “I know I look beat to hell but--”

“Whoa, Jill no, that’s not what I meant!” Carlos suddenly sat up and caressed her upper arms. “No no, you’re beautiful, y--you have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing.” 

Jill sighed and shook her head, looking down at the self-inflicted scratches on her arms. “With me like this, you’d probably say anything I wanna hear,” she said with another humorless laugh.

Carlos took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to look at him, his brows furrowed in a look of concern. Jill felt her cheeks flush as the breath suddenly hitched in her throat. “You really wanna know how I feel about you, Jill?” he asked, his voice not quite a whisper. “Let me show you.” 

Instead of replying, it was Jill’s turn to be speechless as she noticed how quickly his eyes could harden from sweet maple syrup to smoky quartz. Clearly, he wasn’t all fluff and puff. Jill filed that observation away for later, because right then, Carlos lifted her right arm up to his face and kissed those scratches. They were light pecks, but the sensation they left in their wake gave her goosebumps and had her involuntarily tightening her abdominals in anticipation. He continued his lighter than air kisses on her left arm, unfurling it from her chest and exposing her torso to his adoring eyes once again. There was a gentle kiss to the bandage wrapped around her puncture wound from the infection; then, he worked his way up her shoulder, trailing kisses from the nicks on her collarbone to the scar on her cheek. Jill placed her hands on his chest and slid them up to his shoulders, tiling her head back and gasping softly as Carlos made his way up her body. 

Soon, Carlos wrapped his arms around her once again and brought her back down to lay on top of him, kissing her and slowly rolling over so that he was on top of her. As he broke the luscious kiss he continued his path down Jill’s body, kissing the healing cuts on her sternum. Then, he began kissing one of her breasts, taking the nipple into his mouth and rolling his tongue in circles around it; he messaged the other breast with his hand, gently alternating between pinching and rolling her nipple between two fingers and stroking it with his thumb. The moans that tumbled from her open mouth were ones that Jill barely recognized. This wasn’t her first time, but this was the first time that anyone had been so attentive, so reverent and adoring with her body, and the sparks of pleasure spurred on by his lips on her skin were ones that she never wanted to end. It wasn’t enough to say that he wanted her despite her bruises--he embraced them, treated them like they were no different than every other inch of skin under his touch. 

Carlos kissed his way down the large bruise near her rib cage, making Jill tremble as the normally ticklish spot received the same treatment as the marks on her sternum. A brief reprieve from his journey downward came when he slipped his fingers under the waistband of her pajama shorts and pulled them down her thighs, Jill briefly lifting her hips to make it easier for him. As soon as her shorts were completely off and joining her discarded shirts on the floor, Carlos stripped off his own t-shirt, finally giving Jill a view of his hard body beneath it. 

Once again, her dream about him had been completely inadequate. His skin was like liquid caramel, each muscle from his chest down to the lines of his hip bones rippling beneath it. A dark crop of short, curly hair was sprinkled between his pectorals, and it tapered down his torso until it dipped into his sweatpants, which now strained against a pretty impressive erection. Jill bit her lower lip in anticipation for him to free that erection from the confines of those sweats, but he lifted up her leg and placed another of those sweet kisses to the inside of her ankle, a tender spot just above the bone. She gasped, as the sensation from that kiss traveled from her ankle down to her increasingly aching center, and she let out a soft moan as he repeated this with her other ankle. The soft moaning turned into even louder whimpers as she watched Carlos kiss his way up each leg, adorning her bruises with kisses and lightly running his finger tips up and down her thighs. Jill’s stomach fluttered wildly at this sensory overload, the sensations only heightening as she pinched and rolled her nipples with her own fingers. 

This act was more than just sex; it was devotion, reverence, worship...and Carlos was kneeling at her alter as she opened the gates and invited him into the kingdom. He nuzzled her inner thigh before he reached her core, parting her already slick folds of skin with his forefinger. Jill let out a louder moan at his touch, biting her lower lip once more to try and control her noises. Carlos was determined to shred that control to pieces, so he draped one of her legs over his shoulder and began to take long persistent licks against her labia. A gasp following a high pitched moan tore from Jill’s throat just then, and he took it as confirmation to keep going. His kisses and licks became more and more persistent. Then, he paused for a minute to gently blow on her sex and give her a slight reprieve, before he lifted her leg a little bit higher and dragged his tongue from her perineum up to her clit. “Oooh!” Jill cried out and arched her back, reaching down with one hand to grip his hair and reaching up with the other to grip the pillow behind her head. Carlos repeated this long, slow lick once more before he parted her slick labia with his thumbs and dipped his tongue inside of her, humming once he tasted the sweet and salty juices that trickled out into his hungry mouth. 

The fluttering in Jill’s stomach was drowned out by the involuntary clenching of her abdominals, a sensation that her inner walls were trying to replicate around Carlos' tongue. “Fuck! Ohmygo-” Jill rushed out as her gasps and moans became louder and louder. Then, she felt his lips move up from her slick entrance to seal over her clit, replacing his mouth with two fingers that he slipped inside of her. “C-Carlos...agh!” Jill stuttered out as she whipped her head to the side and clawed at the covers, no longer caring that her fingertips still ached from scratching herself in her sleep. She felt like she was simultaneously floating and sinking as the tension in her core wound tighter and tighter. 

"Angel" by Massive Attack filtered out of the radio now, but the provocative sounds coming from Jill were the only thing that Carlos wanted to hear. He sucked at her clit and caressed it with his tongue over and over again, drawing circles around it faster and faster as he felt the tension building in her body. Her muscles tightened around his fingers, and he wanted to drive her over the edge, so all at once he rolled his fingers upwards onto her soft, fleshy g-spot in a ‘come hither’ motion, and sucked on her clit--hard. 

Jill’s orgasm hit her like a bullet and she arched her back as if she’d been shot from behind. She cried out with a long, high pitched, suspended version of ‘ooh’ that drowned out the radio completely and echoed off the walls of the room. With a white-knuckled grip, she yanked at the covers so hard that they tore under her fingers. The sweet and salty liquid in her core gushed out of her, Carlos lapping up as much as possible while the rest flowed freely down his chin and jawline. That feeling of floating reached its peak as each orgasmic spasm reverberated through her, lifting Jill so high that her soul would have floated above her body if it could--a little death.

Proud of himself and yet a bit bewildered, Carlos leaned up and wiped the back of his hand under his chin. As Jill floated back down from the high and her moans and panting quieted down, he leaned back down to nuzzle and kiss her inner thighs. “Wow, Super Cop, might have to start calling you Super Soaker from now on,” he chuckled softly. He expected to hear her chuckle in response, maybe even tell him to zip it, when he heard a choked sob coming from her instead. Alarmed, he crawled up the bed and went to her side. 

Jill covered her face with her hands, trying to hide the emotions that she had been choking back for the past few days. Her dream highlighted what her subconscious already knew, dispelling the confusion surrounding this rapidly rising high tide of emotion. Anger and determination had fueled her escape from Raccoon City, and she thought that after some rest and recuperation, she could pour those red hot emotions into meeting up with her friends and jumping on whatever investigations they’d started. Jill thought that by now whatever fleeting attraction she'd felt for Carlos would’ve dwindled, that once they fled the blast this tension between them would dissipate and she could take an objective approach to stopping Umbrella, with or without his assistance. But she’d been wrong, so wrong, and although she knew that it was way too soon to call this love, she also knew that going their separate ways would’ve been a mistake. For better or worse, she wanted to be with him, needed it, and he’d made it perfectly clear through his reverent touch that he wanted the same thing.

“Jill, wha--are you ok? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Carlos urgently asked, concern replacing the lust on his face. Jill swiped at her tears and pondered looking away from him, but chose to glance up at the ceiling in lieu of getting defensive once again.

“Yeah,” she replied with a sniff, “I just...it’s almost too much.” She then swallowed heavily as she tried to stop the flow of tears. 

“What do you mean?” Carlos stroked a few damp strands of hair from her face as he looked down at her. His eyes had melted back into maple syrup, sweeter than honey. 

Jill explained herself after a quick inhale and then a long, steadying exhale. “No one’s ever cared the way you do--guys I mean. There’s been affection but...it’s like you can see into me, like you see past…” she lifted an arm to emphasize her scars. “...I thought I could ignore it, but I--” she bit her bottom lip, desperately trying to cling to some last semblance of control over what she would confess. “I haven’t felt safe in so long, and I’ve never felt this...wanted or...” she shook her head, still fighting the words.

“Needed?” Carlos interjected, tilting her face toward his with a finger under her chin. The look in his eyes reflected everything that she said and more. Seeing Jill like this, with her defenses down and spilling her heart out, meant more than he could say. “What if I do need you? What if I decided that days ago? I couldn’t let you die back there in Raccoon City; we had our mission, we had our orders, but none of that mattered to me when you were in danger. Leaving you there, would’ve been like leaving a part of myself behind,” Carlos confessed as he stroked her cheek with his thumb. 

Jill was beside herself with this revelation, and she stared into his soft eyes, stunned. “But why...how...” her strained words died on her tongue as Carlos kissed at the watery streaks of her rapidly drying tears, and she let him, with her defenses lowered and the familiar mix of affection and lust rumbling within her like a gathering thunderstorm.

He pulled back to bore into her aqua eyes once more, “I didn’t know why, and I didn’t care how, I just had to get you the hell outta there. And I’d go through it all again in a heartbeat if it meant keeping you safe.” 

There it was, finally--everything that Carlos felt for her laid out in the open. He wasn’t a religious or even a spiritual person, but meeting Jill triggered a sense of recollection that felt like they’d met many times before (in another life, is that how that worked?), and he’d instinctually tried to throw his arm around her at the station as if to say _ah, there you are, finally_. Whatever that feeling was, it had tethered him to her in a way that he didn’t understand, and that invisible link kept him coming to her rescue over and over again. He didn’t believe in fate, and yet this somehow felt like some sort of divine timing. And now, this divine creature had told him in none too many words that she wanted him, needed him, and who was he to refuse? Would she be moved by his recent confession, or would it scare her away and sever this link for good?

“Thought if I told you all this I'd scare you away,” Carlos chuckled nervously, “am I?”

The gathering storm inside of Jill rumbled even closer now, and she reveled in it as she leaned up to capture his lips with hers. She pulled at his bottom lip, sucking it into her mouth and tasting traces of her own juices before releasing it and lasciviously sliding her tongue along the edge of his lip. Carlos felt his own inner storm brewing, causing a familiar strain in his sweatpants that Jill reached down to grab. “No,” she finally replied, “you're not.” Carlos returned the kiss with renewed fervor, letting her roll back on top of him, following her into the eye of the storm.

………..

Several hours later, Carlos smiled down at Jill as she peacefully napped on her stomach, laying on his side and running his fingers up and down her spine. He’d lost track of time, and as he glanced up at the alarm clock he was a bit surprised to read 12:03PM, the radio quietly cranking out “High and Dry” by Radiohead. ‘Four hours huh?’ he thought to himself, ‘damn, maybe this woman’s tryin’ to kill me. Slayed by a sexy warrior goddess, could be worse.’ The goddess in question had finally freed his aching erection and sucked on him until he was about ready to burst. Then, she’d ridden him with abandon, and as she came for a second time, throwing her head back and arching towards the ceiling, he swore that Venus rising up out of the water couldn’t have been more beautiful. His own climax had him shouting almost as loudly as she had, and after they both floated back down to Earth, he’d finally gotten around to completely taking his sweats off.

When he lay beside her again he expected her to be completely drained, but they’d kissed and fondled each other until he was hard once again. Round two had him on top of her, one hand in her hair and the other gripping her thigh as the swirl of his hips stretched her out in ways that had her clawing at his back and squeezing him like a fist. Those scratches still stung a bit, and he was sure that if her nails had been any longer then it would’ve been more painful. Either way, it was totally worth it--at least now there was a good reason for ruined sheets. The only problem was that all of this hot sex had gone down without condoms. Carlos mentioned this right before Jill passed out and she gave a vague reply in a sleepy voice, “There’s always Plan B.” He figured that she was referencing the morning after pill, deciding that after nightfall it would be safe for them both to venture to the pharmacy; he would grab a box of Magnums and she would talk to the pharmacist about the pill--Plan B indeed. 

………..

October 4th, 1999--9:38AM

Two days after they’d rested (mostly) and Jill had finally called Rebecca and Barry to let them know that she was still breathing, Carlos purchased two bus tickets to Chicago, where the pair would meet up with Barry. Barry was none too happy about flying back to the states after he’d already run himself ragged trying to relocate his family to Canada, but he knew that it would be the fastest way to bring Jill and Carlos fake IDs and passports for safe travel. “Hell, it beats a long ass ride in a hot car with my back seat driving-daughter bombarding me with ‘are we there yet’ like it’s her new mantra,” he’d complained, then he sighed. “Damn it’s good to hear your voice, Jill. So tell me, who’s this Wonder Boy that dragged you out of hell? Does he cook or does he make you sandwiches?” 

Wonder Boy and Jill sat on the 9:45AM bus to Chicago, having checked out of the motel first thing that morning. The sparse group of travelers around them kept their distance; people had gotten wind of an alleged cannibal virus that destroyed Raccoon City, and a socially acceptable distance had become the norm over the past few days. Carlos draped his arm around Jill’s shoulders as they waited for their transport to pull out of the terminal. “Sounds like Barry has me beat on nicknames, and just cool phrases in general.”

“Cool is relative you know,” Jill replied with her hand on his thigh, rubbing her thumb back and forth along the fabric of his sweats. “Besides, I’m sure that you'll have a lot more to discuss than who has the best one liners.” 

“Of course, but at least I get to claim Super Cop,” he quickly averted his eyes and darted his head around to see if the other passengers were eavesdropping, continuing in a low voice when he confirmed that the coast was clear, “or should I say, Super Soa--”

“Don’t. Even. Think about it, “Jill warned with a smirk. “No one else is _ever_ hearing that nickname.”

“Shame, it has such a nice ring to it,” Carlos teased, shaking his head. 

“If you keep that up, wait’ll you hear what I call _you_!”

Carlos laughed, bringing her knuckles up to his lips for a kiss, “Call me whatever you want, I’m Wonder Boy now, remember?”

“We’ll see about that.” Jill gave a sly half smile as she turned to gaze out of the window, the bus finally leaving the terminal to take them to the city. Truth be told, she wasn’t too thrilled about going to any city anytime soon, having just survived seeing the one she'd lived in for so long raised to the ground. However, she knew that it wasn’t her final destination, and that she would finally be reunited with her friends and teammates after months apart. She still had to find her partner Chris, but that should be much easier to do once they arrived. As for the man sitting beside her, she could’ve called him partner like he’d done back in Raccoon, but she had a feeling that given time he would become more than that--so much more--but that was for another day.


	4. Cabin Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> RAWR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folx, this is what happens when you stay up until 4AM listening to your sexy playlist...j/k XD  
> This chapter is the main reason for all the crazy tags, for the whole story tbh; I could've done pure smut, but it's just too much fun. So, voila! Also, if you haven't checked out the Valeveira zine link, I highly recommend it; me and many other artists and writers are gonna rock this thing! More info. about it on Tumblr--my handle is @poemtomyself--but for now, click this link to learn more: https://valeveirazine.tumblr.com/
> 
> P.S. next chapter is gonna be super angst time, but before this story ends, I'm not done with making these two devour each other. So for now, enjoy the main course. Thanks for reading!

_There are two sides to me_

_Sometimes I set the evil one free_

_'Cause I'm in love with the devil_

_And she's in love with me_

\--”And I Go,” 16 Volt (1998)

October 1st, 2003--4:44PM

Carlos was still pleasantly surprised that they’d managed to book the cabin so easily. Normally a real vacation would’ve been out of the question, not until the colossal task of taking Umbrella down was over. However, five years later, that’s exactly what they’d accomplished--mostly what _she’d_ accomplished. It was the anniversary of the day they escaped the doomed Raccoon City, and the company responsible had finally been burned to the ground as well, hence the reason for this uncharacteristically long vacation to her favorite little German town from her childhood. Justice (revenge) had finally been served on the corrupt company that had destroyed an entire city and ruined thousands of lives. 

Earlier that year, Jill and her partner Chris Redfield--Carlos swore they were like characters in a buddy cop movie--investigated an outbreak in a village located in Caucasus, Russia. While in Caucasus, they found an Umbrella lab as well as their bastard of a former boss, Wesker, who apparently got away. However, with the help of a private anti-biohazard service, they raided the lab and destroyed Umbrella’s latest toy--a bio-organic weapon (B.O.W.) dubbed T-A.L.O.S. Once it was gone, Umbrella’s stock plummeted and the company’s gravy train finally derailed, much like their heinous bio-weapon Nemesis had derailed that train back in Raccoon City, killing all of those civilians, Mikhail, and almost killing Jill. Thinking about it made Carlos angry all over again, but then he remembered that the nightmare was finally over. His villainous former employer was defeated, and although he was under no illusion that this meant the effects of their evil legacy wouldn’t still be a problem for years to come, they could breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the hardest part was over. 

Jill told him that she’d actually dreamt of this cabin years ago, and this dream was the epiphany for her to sort out her feelings for him. After his strange feeling of being tethered to her since they met, Carlos hadn’t questioned this revelation, especially since it caused her to let her guard down and open up to him--it also led to morning sex, but that was like icing on the cake. Suddenly thinking of cake, Carlos fondly recalled how Jill took him to her favorite restaurant in town, owned by a family who claimed to make the best kaiserschmarrn in the region. It was his first time trying it so he would have to take their word for it, but the pancakes had been so delicious that he’d ordered two more to go. 

Carlos briefly eyed the take out boxes in the fridge as he grabbed the bottle of Limited Edition Disaronno Versace Amaretto that he’d purchased on their way there. He’d brought the almond flavored liquor in the airport during a quick layover, barely managing to sneak the pricey surprise in its velvet gift bag into his carry on before their next flight. Neither one of them had called it an anniversary per se, since it was also the day that Raccoon City was wiped off the map, but at least they still had something to celebrate. Coming to the little German town where Jill spent so many happy times seemed to be exactly what she needed, since she hadn’t stopped smiling since they got off the plane. It was a nice departure from when they’d first arrived in Europe with Barry back in ‘98. 

Back then, Carlos was worried about a possible language barrier when they arrived in Toulouse, France, but Jill reassured him that most people there spoke English as a second language. Worst case scenario, the city was close enough to the border of Spain that some people also spoke Spanish. His native language was Portuguese, but Carlos did speak some Spanish as well. Barry took them to a rental house on the outskirts of Toulouse and Montauban, where he was staying with Rebecca until their investigations into Umbrella’s affiliations in that region concluded. Barry parked the rental car while Carlos and Jill went inside the house. Jill was the first to step through the door and into the main living space, and Rebecca immediately ran up to her and threw her arms around her in a gripping hug. “I’m so glad you’re alright! Oh my god, my heart sank when we saw the broadcast on Raccoon; Jill I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. 

“Ha, Rebecca you’ve got nothing to be sorry for, I’m fine,” Jill replied with a smile. 

“I just can’t believe how quickly things spiraled out of control” she lamented, shaking her head, “one of us should’ve been there with you. We could’ve all come here together or devised a different plan, or...oh, they just can’t get away with this!”

Jill stiffened at the indirect mention of the company that they both knew was responsible for Raccoon City’s demise. She put a reassuring hand on Rebecca’s shoulder, “Damn right they won’t, we’ll see to that. And I’m glad to see you too, missed you guys.” They hugged once more, which is when Rebecca noticed the tall, handsome man patiently standing near the door with his hands in his pockets. “Oh, you must be…”

Jill caught wind of Rebecca’s awkward introduction and turned around, giving him a nod. “Rebecca, this is Carlos Oliveira, also known as the reason I’m alive and well,” she said as she introduced her unexpected hero and lover to her dear friend. Carlos finally stepped forward to extend his hand to Rebecca for a friendly handshake, which she easily accepted.

“It’s so nice to meet you! I can’t thank you enough for saving our girl here,” Rebecca gratefully expressed as she beamed up at him. 

“Pleasure’s all mine, although she saved my ass probably just as many times,” Carlos humbly admitted with a warm smile, “and uh, please feel free to call me Wonder Boy if you want, would be interesting to see someone besides Barry do it.” In fact, Barry said it so often that Jill had to reassure him that it was a term of endearment and not a way to demean him.

“I’ll try and remember that,” she laughed.

As if on cue, Barry walked in and joined them in the living room. “See everyone’s all caught up now, huh? It’s freezing in here. Hey, Wonder Boy, ever build a fire?” he asked as he clapped a hand onto Carlos’ back. “Follow me, let's see if there’s some fresh logs out back.”

Carlos was still fighting a bit of jet lag, but he complied. “Lead the way boss,” he replied with a smirk and followed Barry through the living area and out the back door. 

Once the guys had left, Jill turned back to Rebecca. “Where’s Chris? Doesn’t he have an apartment in the city?” she asked, wondering about the whereabouts of her tough as nails partner. 

“We haven’t heard from him in almost three weeks now,” Rebecca plaintively replied as she led Jill into the kitchen to grab them a couple of drinks. “I tried calling, emailing, even stopping by his place the other day, and found nothing--he hasn’t even left a note. It’s like he’s purposely gone off the grid, I’m not even sure if Chris let his sister know where he is yet.”

“Jesus, Chris,” Jill sighed as she leaned back against the kitchen counter.

Rebecca walked over to the fridge. “Yeah...I’m sorry Jill, I wish I had better news to give you on Chris. Plus side? If he’s gone this long without contacting anyone, then he must’ve discovered something important, right?”

“If only it were that easy with him,” Jill mumbled, accepting a cold bottle of Perrier. 

Rebecca opened her own bottle and took a quick glance towards the window, which framed a pretty view of the lush landscape behind the house. “So, Carlos--or should I say Wonder Boy--seems so nice, and he’s cute too,” she gushed. “Okay, tell me everything: how you met, how he rescued you, when you realized that you like him and any other juicy details.”

Jill laughed as she opened her bottle, “Hold on there Speed Racer, one question at a time.”

Rebecca pretended like she didn’t hear her request. “Is he a good kisser?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Jill paused for a second, then slowly brought the bottle to her lips without answering the question. However, Rebecca was more perceptive than she realized. “Was...there more than just kissing?” she asked with arched eyebrows. Jill still didn’t answer, taking an exaggeratedly long sip of the bubbly water. “Oh my god, you totally did!” Rebecca suddenly yelled out, nearly dropping her bottle. 

Jill nearly choked on the water still in her throat, coughing for a few seconds before it went down the wrong tube. “Keep your voice down!” she hissed out after catching her breath.

“Okay, now I REALLY need details!”

“Jeez Rebecca, seriously?!” Jill asked, slightly bewildered. 

Rebecca shook her head as if trying to clear it from brain fog. “Sorry,” she said, apologetic but still excited over the news. “Listen, to be honest, when I’m not doing casework or research...I’m so bored! I mean, I could drive out to the city and hang out there, but I’m basically by myself out here, or at least I was. Let's face it, Barry's fun but he's not the 'girl talk' type” she acknowledged with a smirk. “Besides, for safety reasons, we should obviously keep a low profile as much as possible…” she took another quick glance at the back window “...but I still need some juicier entertainment than badly subtitled sitcoms,” she finished, finally taking a sip of her water.

“So, my sex life is entertainment now?” Jill wasn’t the ‘girl talk’ type either, but she did find it hard to ignore the appeal of divulging at least some of the explicit details to Rebecca. After all, even though being back in the country where she grew up was nice, it's not like they were here on an extended vacation. So, they had to enjoy their downtime while they could.

“I know it’s a weird request, but could you please indulge me, even just a little?” Rebecca pleaded with a nervous smile on her face.

With a sigh, Jill finally conceded; “Okay fine, but we’re not talking out here. Where’s our room?” 

Rebecca led Jill to the bedroom and en suite bathroom that she and Carlos shared for the duration of their stay, and Jill shared as many ‘juicy’ details as she felt comfortable sharing with her wide eyed and stupidly grinning friend. 

Unfortunately, when Chris finally arrived at the house a week later, the conversation wasn’t as ‘juicy’ or friendly. He’d waited until Carlos and Barry went out on an errand and Rebecca was researching something in the study; then, he hashed it out with Jill in the living room. “Look I’m not saying that you don’t deserve to enjoy yourself after all the shit you’ve been through, but don’t let this distract you from what we’re trying to accomplish here. We’ve already got our hands full making sure that we all stay alive long enough to take Umbrella down for good; we don’t need another liability.” Those words--distract and liability--referred to Carlos, and Jill was having none of it.

She stood in front of her pacing friend, arms crossed defensively, ready to guard herself from this verbal lashing and go on the offense when necessary. “That _distraction_ has a name, and if it weren’t for Carlos saving my life then I wouldn’t be standing here, listening to you bitch at me. Not to mention he’s the only one here who knew Nicholai the best, and he’s the only person that we can trust to help us figure out who hired him.”

“Well if he really knew him all that well then he would’ve caught on to his treachery a little sooner, don’t you think? Or at least noticed that he'd been played like a toy soldier,” Chris said in an accusatory way.

“Watch it, Chris,” Jill responded through clenched teeth.

The pacing suddenly ended as Chris stopped directly in front of her, making eye contact for the first time since his little tirade began ten minutes prior to this little tête-à-tête. With a sigh and an apologetic tone, he clarified his train of thought, “Listen, I’m sorry, ok? I just don’t understand how you can trust him so unconditionally when you just met him--you’re not that naïve, Jill.” 

Jill bristled at that as her temper flared. “I trusted him with my life and that paid off several times over, remember?” 

“I’m just trying to be objective here...someone has to be!”

“Yeah, an objective dick wad!”

Chris flinched as her voice went from moderate annoyance to completely peeved in a matter of seconds. Her hands were at her sides now, clenched into fists as she stared him down with blue eyes icier than a frozen lake. “Now it's your turn to listen, Chris,” she continued after a beat, “Carlos is no cop, but he is a damn good soldier and another much needed pair of hands around here. That alone makes him anything _but_ a liability. Carlos can handle himself, something he’s done since childhood when he lost a parent...you and I both know what that’s like.”

Jill’s voice had finally lost its edge by that last sentence, but her words were still sharp enough to pierce through his harder than steel defenses. With his walls finally breached, Chris had no other choice but to surrender. He looked away from her, head tilted toward the floor. “Alright, you made your point,” he quietly affirmed.

Jill huffed as she lifted her arms and quickly let them flop back down to her sides, “Is there anything else you need to get off your chest, Chris?” 

When he finally responded, Chris was already on his way to the door. “I’ll call you when I get a new lead,” he tossed over his shoulder.

“Love you,” Jill called as he opened the door.

“Love you too, Jill--glad you’re safe” Chris muttered as he shut the door behind him.

…….

Back in the present, Carlos reminisced on how he’d been a little peeved himself after Jill summarized her conversation with Chris, and on how her defending him was such a turn on. Everything about her turned him on, from her bravery and compassion, to her loyalty and determination to help others and bring corruption to its knees, as well as her biting wit and incredibly sharp mind. Of course, the list could go on and on, but he wagered that list would eventually become as long as a novel. Walking back to their bedroom with his boozy gift in hand, Carlos was impressed by the cozy living area. It had cathedral ceilings with timber framing lining the walls, a plush sofa and reclining chair, and a tv mounted on the wall above the fireplace. Maybe later that night, he could convince Jill to watch a movie with him, curl up on that sofa with a giant bowl of kettle corn.

When he opened the bedroom door, he was greeted to the sight of his warrior goddess sitting on the bench near the bay window. Jill had an open file on her lap, researching various global incidents with any signs of B.O.W. activity. Umbrella was gone now, but it was highly probable that some disgruntled former employees had taken the bioweapons research and sold it on the black market, passing on their heinous legacy of horror. It seemed that even though the castle had crumbled, the remnants would be hard to clear. There would always be some greedy imbecile selling weapons of war, they just had to be sure that those weapons didn’t include any of the viral weaponry that wreaked havoc on thousands of innocent lives. 

Jill was one of the few people best equipped for this momentous task, but for now, they had one hell of a lot to celebrate. Carlos was more than happy to help with her research, having stayed out of the field for so long, but research wasn’t on his mind as he stared at Jill. Those beautiful long legs of hers were stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankles. Five years later and the scars of their escape had cleared, but those legs and the things they could do never ceased to wile and beguile him. Some things never changed…

She wore a pair of cut off denim shorts to show them off, along with a black t-shirt with little white stars printed all over it. The outfit made her look like a college student doing research for a project, and she even tapped her pen on her lower lip in time with the music blaring from her laptop--16 Volt, her favorite band from back in ‘98. 

“You look like a college girl right now,” Carlos said as he sauntered over to her.

Jill didn’t look up as she pulled her ankles back towards her body, crossing her legs so that he could sit next to her. “Why? Is it the outfit, or the file I’ve got here?”

“Both?”

Jill then looked up from the file on her lap with a half smile. “Fair enough,” she replied, tucking a strand of her shoulder length hair behind her ear. She’d let it grow over the years, and it only highlighted the graceful curves of her face even more, or maybe Carlos was just biased. “What’s in the bag?” she added, nodding at the velvet sack in his hand.

“Something I hope tastes better than Jager,” Carlos professed with a grimace, “That stuff’s just not for me.” 

Jill laughed, “Maybe you outta stick to beer from now on, and whatever this is.”

Once he handed her the bag, Jill peered inside it and her eyes immediately widened. Reaching inside, she pulled out the bottle of almond liquor, turning it back and forth in the sunlight. “Wow, I haven’t had this stuff in years! It’s pretty expensive for amaretto, where’d you get it?”

“Somewhere between Tampa and Paris,” Carlos replied with a cheeky smile.

“So...at an overpriced store at the airport?” Jill surmised, raising an eyebrow.

‘Well, this went accordin’ to plan ol’ boy,’ Carlos mused to himself as he ruffled his own shoulder length, curly hair while trying not to look embarrassed. To Jill he said, “Well, this technically is a special occasion, so...I figured why not just this once?” His former employer had paid well enough that for the first couple of years, money wasn’t too much of an issue. Then, as bioterror incidents popped up in different locations around the world, Chris and Jill, aka the ‘buddy cops,’ were offered jobs by multiple governments to investigate and put a stop to the incidents. It also brought them closer to ending Umbrella once and for all, so now that the task was finally complete, why not indulge a little?

Jill leaned forward and reached out to lightly stroke his scruffy jawline with her knuckles. “It is special, and I love it. You did good, Wonder Boy,” she praised, observing the bottle in her hand as if it were the file she’d previously had on her lap. 

A smile returned to his face just then, and Carlos leaned in next, giving her a soft kiss. “I aim to please, Super Cop,” he whispered, leaning his forehead on hers for just a moment. When he leaned back once again, he nodded towards the bottle--“wanna try it now?”

“Sure,” Jill answered right away. 

“Alright, hold on a sec.” 

Carlos got up and made his way back into the other room, unaware of how Jill’s ocean blue eyes began to burn like blue flames with the fiery intent behind them. 

When he returned from the kitchen with a couple of highball glasses from the cupboard, Jill was sitting on the wooden bench in front of the massive king bed with the bottle of Amaretto popped open. Holding the bottle about an inch above her lips, she tilted it and let the burnt sienna colored liquid pour out. The liquor splashed into her mouth and also dribbled down her front, soaking into the fabric of her starry t-shirt. 

“Whoa, slow down there 80 proof,” Carlos chuckled as he leaned against the door jamb,” save some for me, or at least for the glasses.” 

“Whoops, got a little carried away. Oh well,” Jill replied in a blasé voice.

Then, she put the bottle beside her on the wooden bench, and stripped her top off, letting the hem graze the undersides of her breasts to make them bounce on its way up. The smile Carlos wore slowly dropped while his eyes began to widen. Jill still looked unconcerned as she sat there half naked--she hadn’t bothered with a bra when she got dressed that morning. “There, that’s better,” she said, as she gently tossed her hair, crossed one leg over the other and picked up the bottle again. This time it touched her lips, but she left her mouth open, and Carlos followed the flow of the liquor with his wide eyed stare as it poured down her front. The liquid poured down her collar bone, over the slopes of her perky breasts, and down in between them to wet the flesh above her sternum. Slipping even lower, it flowed down her stomach and seeped into the waistband of her denim shorts. Pausing to look down at herself, she once again placed the bottle down. “Well, that won’t do, might get itchy as it dries,” she said as she stood up, unbuttoned and unzipped the shorts, then pulled them down her hips until they easily slid down her legs and dropped at her ankles. 

There was a strappy thong hiding underneath those skimpy shorts--four black shoestring-like straps connecting a tiny piece of fabric that barely covered her landing strip of pubic hair. Carlos nearly dropped the glasses, which appeared to break the spell that her little display had cast on him. Jill giggled as she stepped out of the shorts and nudged them over to her discarded top. “Careful,” she chided, “those glasses are thick, wouldn’t want to cut yourself if they break.” 

‘Fuck me,’ Carlos thought to himself, still unable to speak as he eyed her panties, ‘when the hell’d she buy that thing?!’ He was still unable to move as well, save to keep the glasses from falling out of his clammy hands. Jill knew just what to do to get him over to her. “Well,” she teased once more as she sat back down on the bench, “you just gonna stare at me?” Bringing a forefinger to one of her glistening nipples, she swiped a drop of the liquor and brought it to her mouth, snaking her tongue out to lick her finger and absorb the nutty liquid. 

That did it…

Carlos placed the glasses on the desk near the door and finally strode over to her, bending down to slide a hand around the back of Jill’s neck and kissing her with wanton abandon. The intoxicating taste of both her and the Amaretto was just the appetizer, and he kissed and licked his way down her body, leaving no inch of skin covered in amaretto untouched. He crouched in front of her and took his time with her nipples, alternating between kisses, licks and light pulls with his teeth. Jill gasped and lightly moaned at his touch, massaging his scalp with her nimble fingers. Carlos tasted his way even lower, his tongue snaking its way down her stomach, briefly dipping into her belly button, which made her giggle, until he reached her lower belly and placed a chaste kiss to it before standing back up. Jill took the hint and began to scoot back until she was on the bed proper.

As soon as he stood up, Carlos stripped off his own shirt, his hard torso glowing in the afternoon sunlight. He undid his belt buckle, then as he unbuttoned and unzipped the fly on his jeans, he stared down at her and bit his lower lip, dragging it slowly out from between his gleaming teeth. Jill eyed him right back, sitting up on her elbows and trying to control her racing pulse; she inadvertently began to rub her legs together as a dull ache began to throb between her thighs. Once Carlos had stripped off his jeans and boxers all at once, he grabbed the liquor bottle by the neck and crawled over to Jill’s side; “Stay there,” he commanded, a mix of affection and lust on his face. Jill had a moment to ponder his next move while she did what he asked, before Carlos tipped the bottle and poured a bit more of the liquor onto her collar bone, watching as it ran in a rivulet down her front, only this time, he was there to catch it with his mouth before it hit her lower belly. He then licked his way back up her body, ending at her lips with another delectable, almond flavored kiss, Jill humming in appreciation. The kisses back down were sweeter and more chaste at first, keeping the bottle in one hand and supporting himself on the bed as he journeyed downward, until he reached the line of her panties. 

Jill was curious about how he would go about taking her thong off one handed, even contemplated helping him with the task. Suddenly, Carlos bit at one of the shoestring straps and began to drag her panties down her hips with his teeth, sliding back down the bed as he slid them down her thighs, calves and ankles. Jill chuckled in surprise and delight as she watched him disrobe her with his pearly whites, stretching out onto her side once she was free of them to let him know which position she was in the mood for right then. Carlos placed the bottle back on the bench before he crawled back up to her, ready to unveil another surprise for his ambitious lover. Placing one hand on her lower back to keep her on her side, he gripped her upper leg and lifted it just enough to attack her labia with his wicked tongue. A load gasp and a “Fuck!” escaped Jill’s lips just then, and even though she wanted to grind her slick lips against his, the position limited her movement, leaving her at his mercy. Carlos took full advantage of this and buried his tongue into her with fast, hard licks as she squirmed and moaned in his grasp.

Jill thought that he would tease her with those long, perineum to clit licks that she loved so much; instead, she felt his hot breath move even lower, past her perineum, and felt him start to place light licks against her anus. “Oh!” she cried out as her body began to shudder with each flick of his tongue against her sensitive rosette, grasping the sheets and reaching down to finger her clit and bring her closer to her climax. Carlos ate up her shaky gasps that flooded the room and his senses, almost smiling as he circled her hole over and over again with his ravenous tongue. This savory torture made his cock ache, his body’s impatient reminder that he wanted, needed to be sheathed inside of her soon or he would go insane. Soon arrived faster than expected, as several minutes later Jill came with a loud cry that almost drowned out the music still flowing from the laptop speakers, arching her back and fighting his grip to try and clench her legs together. Carlos released her leg and let her clench them, holding her steady as her spasms rolled through her.

Fully pleased with himself and eager to continue, he kissed his way up the side of her body, nipping at her hip bone and pausing at her breast to suck at it hungrily enough to almost take the entire thing into his mouth. Another ecstatic moan came from Jill, and she cupped his face to drag his lips to her own hungry mouth. “Just couldn’t help yourself could you?” Jill asked him, still smiling and panting in between greedy kisses.

“Nope,” Carlos replied in a mischievous tone, “can’t help this either…” As he positioned himself behind her he hoisted up her top leg, which Jill immediately grabbed by hooking her elbow under her knee, and he began to rub his aching erection against her slick, swollen lower lips. 

Jill bit her lip and hummed in anticipation for what she knew was coming next, but he surprised her once again by lightly slapping his heavy cock against her slick labia several times, making her giggle. The giggles continued as Carlos suddenly slipped inside of her, the previous orgasm allowing him to bury his cock to the hilt in one smooth, easy glide. “Agh!” Jill’s giggles were abruptly cut off as she yelled out, quickly glancing down to watch as he slid in and out of her with long, rough strokes that had him almost pulling out completely, only to slam back into her quivering core. The sight of Carlos fucking her like that had Jill letting go of her leg and leaning forward, bracing herself against the sheets as she nearly lost her mind to the onslaught on her sex. Carlos wrapped a large arm around her chest and quickly pulled her back until she was flush against his own chest, spooning her while his thrusts shortened but gained speed, frantically panting into her neck. 16 Volt was still crooning in the background, _I am your everyday everything_ , but the only sounds that Jill coherently noticed were their pants and long, drawn out moans, preceded by the sound of his scrotum furiously slapping against her slick flesh; she desperately grasped at his arm and held on, lest she fall off this wild ride.

The arm Carlos had wrapped around her chest traveled upwards, his fingertips finding their way to her open mouth and onto the fullest part of her bottom lip, where she flicked her tongue at the tips in between his mind numbing thrusts. His own panting mouth made its way to her earlobe, clasping it between his teeth while flicking his tongue at the tender flesh. Jill’s grip on his arm tightened as she pushed back against him to meet his merciless thrusts, her moans and gasps sounding more like hisses now with her flicking at his fingertips like she wanted to skin them with her tongue. The ride began to wind down some time later as Carlos began to slow down his thrusts and catch his breath, making up for the slower speed with the rough thrusts that commenced their wicked rendezvous. Jill had just enough coherence left to remember something that she eagerly wanted to try, so she reached back to stroke the side of his face, a move that instantly got his attention.

“Baby, I wanna try something,” she panted out.

Carlos immediately released her earlobe and eased his hard thrusts, cupping her chin and turning her face to his for a sweltering kiss, “What’d you have in mind?”

With a sly smile, Jill responded, “Sit back on your knees and let me sit up.”

Carlos gingerly slipped out of her, and after a quick kiss to her shoulder he obeyed her command, sitting up; Jill scooted back until she was almost sitting on his lap. Instead of immediately continuing where they left off, he waited, albeit impatiently, for her next move. The wait ended as Jill leaned forward, slightly spreading her knees and raising her hips until she floated just above the head of his thick cock. Once there, she carefully slid back onto him, scolding him when he brought his hands to her hips to help guide her down further.

“Hands off,” she commanded, lightly brushing at one of his hands while supporting herself with the other.

“As you wish, babe,” Carlos chuckled, leaning back on his hands as Jill eased her way down. However, she didn’t go all the way down; she stopped midway down his shaft and began to slowly undulate her hips back and forth, like she was thrusting into the sheets. Offhandedly, Jill noticed that the speakers were cranking out “And I Go,” and suddenly her original idea took on a naughty new twist; she gradually began to bounce her hips in time with the fast tempo of the music. “Mmmm,” Jill closed her eyes and hummed as she bit her bottom lip and lazily rolled it back out, slightly arching her back and enjoying the yummy feel of bobbing her slick cunt up and down on his thick cock, loving how much control she had at that moment. This was her ride now.

Carlos was still buzzed from the almond flavored liqueur, and now felt like he was simultaneously passing out and pumping with adrenaline--the hell was this woman doing to his body?! “Holy sh--gah, fuck!” he exclaimed as he leaned his head back and gave a loud moan with trembling lips towards the cathedral ceiling. His hands twitched under his weight, the insatiable urge to grab those twerking hips of hers likely to make him snap like a twig, but he kept his hands where they were as his patience was once again put to the test. On the verge of hysteria he thought to himself, ‘Please let the fucking song end soon, please, shit! Maybe she’ll slow that ass down, take it easy and I can--’

This desperate thought was interrupted when an abrupt break in the song had Jill suddenly slowing down. She looked over her shoulder and right into his eyes, her sex tousled hair falling over half of her face, her visible eye gleaming like a polished blue topaz. Carlos had only seen that gleam a handful of times in their half a decade together--the first of those times was in the motel, where she’d all but rebuked his misplaced sense of guilt over the way things had gone down before their daring escape from Raccoon City. The look had been full of malice, pain, and rage at everything she’d lost, but this...this icy gemstone of a look burned with the reflection of the late sunlight, and something more provocative, wild and lustful. Jill then gave an almost malevolent smile, only accentuating the dangerous look in her eye, before she bit and rolled her bottom lip between her teeth once again. “Alright, come and get me Carlos,” she panted in a voice sweeter than a siren's call, luring him to his doom.

Carlos was still hypnotized by the sight in front of him, when her words seemed to coax his own wild side out of its cave, practically chomping at the bit as it begged for him to unleashed it. He raised his eyebrows and curtly responded in a strained voice, “Yeah?” 

Jill was still eyeing him as she panted, letting her mouth hang agape as she snaked her tongue along her bottom lip. Carlos ground his teeth as his pulse raged and his fingers gripped the sheets almost hard enough to tear through the fabric. “Do it now, and do your worst,” she all but sang, and it was the catalyst to finally snap the chain on his wild side and set the insatiable beast free. 

In the blink of an eye, Carlos was sitting forward and snaking the fingers of one hand into her hair while the other wrapped around Jill’s front, yanking her back against his chest once again. He savored her sudden gasp when this new position caused him to bottom out inside of her, and he started to pinch and roll one of her nipples while his mouth found her earlobe with one snapping bite. Jill let out a squeal as he latched onto her, her hands forced to leave the covers and grasp at their thighs. The harsh thrusts from earlier paled in comparison to this new onslaught. Even though his hands maintained some semblance of gentleness, his thrusts were absolutely savage--a clever beast. Each brutish thrust carried the loud smacking sound of flesh on flesh, followed by even louder cries from Jill. These sounds were the purist sustenance for the insatiable creature that he had morphed into, but there was only one sound that he wanted to hear even more. He briefly released her earlobe from his jaw before practically hissing into her ear, “Say my name, Jill.” 

Jill was lost in the sound bath of music, mind numbing sex and her own keening cries when she barely registered the command, “wh-wha-I...ah…I...”

“Say it,” he hissed again, briefly pinching her nipple a little harder. Jill squealed again, digging her fingertips into the arm wrapped around her. “C-Carlos,” she managed to gasp out, but he still needed more.

“Louder,” he commanded.

“Carlos,” she whimpered, the strain on her scalp causing tears to string the corners of her eyes.

“Louder,” he growled.

“Carlos, ah!” she yelped.

“Again, baby” he ordered once again, sucking slowly on her earlobe.

“Carlooos,” Jill moaned, her high pitched noises dying down to whimpers as his thrusts slowed down. 

“That’s it baby,” he cooed into her ear. He then released her hair and slowly slipped his cock out of her as his hand slid down to her rear. Freeing her nipple from his other hand to hold her tighter with his big arm, Carlos cupped his palm before he reared back and gave Jill a loud spank on the fullest part of her bottom, just above her thigh. “Agh!” Jill gasped out, her cheek stinging; but she still wanted more, affirming it when she whipped her face toward his with a wicked smile on her face. Carlos took note right away and reared his cupped palm back to spank her several more times, savoring the loud smacking noises along with her frantic pants and quick moans--savory little morsels for his ravenous appetite. And yet he still wanted more, ready to swallow her hole. He gave her ass one last slap that was hard enough to have Jill squealing again, and she bit his bottom lip to stifle the high pitched noise. Carlos kissed back with a feral sound, only to bite her bottom lip when she released his, pulling it into his mouth and sucking even harder than he’d sucked on her earlobe. 

Finally releasing her from his grip, he gave her an easy shove back down on her hands and knees. Jill immediately reached out to support herself on her shaky wrists, the new position once again taking him out of her line of sight. The anticipation for what was next cut through the alcohol induced buzz from earlier, and as she caught her breath she noticed that his fingers were up to something. Carlos rubbed his fingers in the slippery juices that the previous pounding rendered from her. Jill gasped as his soaked thumb began to rim her anus, suddenly stiffening at this turn of events. The clever creature behind her noticed her hesitation, so he reassured her as he caressed her hip, “Just say the word, and I’ll stop.” Jill couldn’t string together a coherent sentence at that point, but she replied as simply as she could--“Yes.”

With her consent, the beast once again cowed his gentle side and slowly shoved his large thumb into her ass. “Argh!” Jill shouted, and the minute she felt his cock slide back into her again, the sensation of this double penetration made her midsection quake and her back concave. Carlos gave her about ten seconds to adjust to the fullness before he started to snake his hips much like he’d watched her do earlier, a sly sort of payback for that sweet agony. Jill breathed out stunted, almost choked moans as her sex quivered around his cock and the nerve endings around his thumb went into overdrive. She panted so hard that her mouth refused to close and a thin line of drool began to dribble towards the sheets, the tip of her tongue hanging loosely from her lips.

Filling her up like this only made her tighten around his cock even more, and Carlos was absolutely beside himself. He panted and grunted, hissed and growled like the creature that he’d become as he absorbed the sight of his thick thumb and heavy cock slipping in and out of her dripping cunt and tight ass, the sweat glistening on her back and on his chest glowing golden in the sunlight. He lived for that moment, seeing their bodies intertwined, feeding off of her desperate cries, pleasuring them both, and all the while she was putty in his hands. This darker side of him wanted nothing more than to fuck her, this wild and sexy warrior goddess, until she passed out, over and over again through the night and until the morning sun rose.

Jill was already tightening around him again, the delectable sounds spilling from her mouth growing even louder as her body prepared for another orgasm. He began to increase the speed of his harsh thrusts until he almost matched the manic tempo from when they began, sending her over the edge. Moments later, the orgasmic release that Jill had been rapidly building up to spiked through her. She said his name one last time, and on the last syllable she arched her back, whipped her hair back and released a cry that went from a yell, to a scream, to a screech, resembling the wail of an ambulance siren. “Jill,” Carlos responded in a strained voice through clenched teeth, finally finding his own orgasm mere seconds later and releasing a piercing roar towards the ceiling. Jill’s wail turned into sobs as she milked his twitching shaft, trembling as he spilled into her thrumming core. 

Once the twitching subsided, the beast slunk back to its cave and Carlos delicately slipped out of her, allowing her to collapse forward onto the mattress. Completely spent, he ran a hand through his sweaty curls and crawled over to her side to lay on his back. They both lay there for a while, until their racing pulses evened out, their labored breathing calmed down and their wits returned. Once the room stopped spinning, Carlos turned his gaze toward Jill as he leisurely caressed her arm with the back of his forefinger. He wasn’t sure if she was still awake after such an assault on the senses, but she stirred as he stroked her, opening her eyes and giving him a lazy, sated smile. “Hey stranger,” she whispered.

“Hey gorgeous” Carlos mumbled back, looking at her adoringly.

“Hmmm,” Jill hummed as she rolled onto her side to face him, “well...that was something else.”

“Hope that somethin’ else was a good thing,” he inquired as he arched an eyebrow,” you did say ‘do your worst’ ya know.”

“I know what I said,” Jill responded with a smirk, “it was all part of my master plan. And no, it wasn’t good--”

Carlos’ eyes widened and he inclined his head like he was about to speak, but Jill silenced him with a finger to his lips. 

“--it was amazing. Incredible. Fucking _mind blowing_ ,” she finished. 

Her affirming reply made him relax and bring his head back down to the sheets; he reached for the hand still at his lips and brought it down too, interlocking their fingers. “So...would you give it five ‘stars’ then?” 

“Oh jeez,” Jill winced at the terrible pun. 

Carlos simply laughed, “Sorry, couldn’t resist it babe.” He smiled at her adoringly again as Jill rolled her eyes. 

……..

Half an hour later, Jill once again had her back against Carlos’ chest, only this time they were in a warm bathtub full of bubbles, the Amaretto and highball glasses on a teak wood bath caddy in front of them. Carlos massaged her wrists as the rest of their muscles relaxed in the water, her hands still sore from supporting herself while he’d rammed into her from behind. A soft hum rumbled in Jill’s throat as he messaged a particularly sore spot, and Jill’s head rolled back against his shoulder. The bedroom was so warm that they hadn’t bothered to shut the door, and music filtered into the bathroom. Jill closed her eyes and let the combination of the warm water and Carlos’ tender touch lull her into a tranquil state, when the chorus of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” floated into the room: 

_No, I don't wanna fall in love_

_No, I don't wanna fall in love_

_With you..._

The hauntingly beautiful voice was accompanied by a lower, more sultry one that easily harmonized with the melody. ‘Wait…’ Jill thought to herself, suddenly pulled out of her stupor. She turned towards the source of the lower voice with a look of surprise, “Is that you?” Carlos simply smiled and shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t cradling her head. “Wow, Carlos you never told me that you could sing, let alone like that!” she said, still stunned.

“You never asked,” was his oversimplified reply. 

“Really? In five years, you could’ve used your hidden talent to impress me at any point, or I dunno, auditioned for American Idol,” she chuckled. 

“I’m not into Hollywood, plus the music industry sucks. Besides, I’m already right where I wanna be,” he confessed.

Jill was going to press him further, but he stopped her with a tender kiss that absorbed her words and heightened the buzz from the liquor. Carlos pulled his lips away after a minute, leaning his forehead against hers as they caught their breath. They stayed like that for a moment, until as if on the same wavelength, they said in unison, “I love you.”

Carlos and Jill abruptly opened their eyes and stared at each other. “I said it first,” they affirmed, still speaking in unison. Mischievous smiles crept onto each of their faces. 

“Bullshit, I was like half a second before you,” Carlos claimed.

“That’s what you said last time. Let’s call it a tie, shall we?” She said as she raised an eyebrow. 

“Alright, fine. But I got first dibs on the strawberries from the kaiserschmarrn we brought this morning.”

“Oh no, _I’m_ calling bullshit now.” Nobody messed with her favorite treat, not even Wonder Boy.

“I called it first.”

“Look it, you--”

Jill was cut off once again as he kissed her and pinched the nipple that wasn’t sore, making her squeal and bat at his hand. Carlos let go, wrapping his big arms around her and deepening the kiss. When the kiss finally ended, he cradled her in his arms and sang along to the rest of the song. Jill could’ve spent the rest of the night in that tub with him, hell, she could’ve stayed in that cozy cabin with him until who knows when, watching the world go by. Unfortunately, the world had other plans...


	5. Les Morts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *sad face*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok you guys, here's the bulk of the angst that I promised--sorry in advance for any broken hearts or shed tears! There is a method to my madness, but that method had to include some more despair for our boy here. Anyway, stay tuned for more yummy things next chapter, and thanks for reading!

_Bury all your secrets in my skin_

_Come away with innocence and leave me with my sins_

_The air around me still feels like a cage_

_And love is just a camouflage for what resembles rage again_

_[...] Deliver me into my fate_

_If I'm alone I cannot hate_

_I don't deserve to have you_

_Oh, my smile was taken long ago_

_If I can change I hope I never know_

\--”Snuff,” Slipknot (2008)

  
  
September 30, 2006--3:33AM

“Jill?”

Carlos couldn’t remember when or why he woke, but he immediately noticed that Jill wasn’t tucked under his arm. He sat up in bed and looked towards the en suite bathroom, but the door was open and the light was out. The bedroom door was closed, and he couldn’t hear her in the main room of their one bedroom apartment. Apprehension had him ready to hop out of bed and go find her, when all of a sudden, the bedroom door burst open. Someone in a black hooded cloak had their hand against the back of the door, keeping it from bouncing back after slamming it against the wall. Scrambling for the night stand, Carlos immediately went for his pistol in the drawer, only to discover that it wasn’t there. “What the hell?” he exclaimed as the figure removed their hood. He froze…

“Jill? Jill, wha-what are you doing?” he asked, confused as he took in his girlfriend's strange appearance. Her face was pale, and her hair was an even paler shade of blonde. She stalked over to him with a malevolent look in her eyes, no smile. As she reached the bed, Carlos chuckled nervously, “Uh, babe, if you wanna role play again then we could just--”

Jill suddenly snapped her arm out and grabbed him by the neck, cutting off his words and half of his air supply. “Agh! Jill...gah, wha--” Carlos stuttered out as she choked him with inhuman strength. He grabbed at her arm to try and break her hold, but she clamped onto his throat like a pair of pliers, refusing to let go. Then, she slid her other hand out of the cloak, and he stopped struggling for a second to stare in horror at the sight before him. Jill held a hideous creature--possibly a B.O.W.--in her hand, and its tentacles wriggled and writhed in her hand with an equally unnerving squeaking noise. As he realized that Jill was bringing the thing towards his face, Carlos frantically began to shove at her arm, her face, her torso, anything that he could get his hands on. “J-Jill, what the f-fuck?!” he desperately choked out, but she barely even flinched at his attempts to loosen her grip. “Agh...don’t!” ‘This can’t be her,’ he thought grimly to himself. ‘This isn’t my Jill, this is an imposter. It has to be…’ 

The tentacles from the creature in her hand dove straight for his open mouth, prying their way past his teeth and tongue to burrow into his throat, with the bulk of the creature following suit. The Jill lookalike finally released his throat, but Carlos felt no reprieve as he tried to yell and scream with the creature writhing its way into his jaw. He felt it break his jawbone, sliding past his uvula and tonsils and burying its way into his esophagus. The agonizing pain had Carlos briefly clawing at his own mouth and jaw to pry the thing out of him, before he went into shock; his pulse raced as the shallow breaths through his nose became slower and slower, his chest burned, and the chill running through his body had him almost convulsing. Then, his eyes rolled back into his head as he finally lost consciousness, and everything went dark…

Carlos woke with a start, coughing and gulping in breaths like that hideous thing was still clawing at his throat. His hand went for his neck, as if he didn’t believe that what he’d just seen was merely a lucid dream. “Fuck,” he breathed out as he glanced around the bedroom. There was a brief moment of panic when he realized that he was alone, but then he remembered why and tried to steady his breaths as he ran both hands through his long, sweat soaked curls. 

The Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) received a tip about the whereabouts of former President and CEO of Umbrella turned international fugitive Oswell E. Spencer, and Chris and Jill were the two agents assigned to take him into custody, as well as locate their former boss turned arch enemy Albert Wesker. Wesker escaped custody during the Caucasus raid that ended Umbrella three years prior, and hopefully apprehending Spencer would lead to information on Wesker’s whereabouts. Unfortunately, that had been eighteen days ago, and Carlos hadn’t heard from Jill since then. 

He remembered arguing with her about it before she left, wondering why the hell a mission this important only called for two people to investigate yet another Spencer mansion. “C’mon, we’ve been through this, the SOAs (Special Operations Agents) usually cover an assignment two at a time,” Jill said as she packed her duffle bag. Carlos was well aware of how the BSAA conducted operations, since he was now a firearms and explosives trainer for new recruits. The anti-bioterror organization started with eleven founding members--Chris and Jill were two of those eleven members, and Carlos was the first recruit. Ever since the disgraced director Clive O'Brian resigned, the United Nations had taken over the BSAA, moving its headquarters to Newark, NJ, closer to New York City and the UN's North American headquarters. 

“I know that, but this is a Spencer Mansion, Jill. You really wanna risk going into another one of those without a full squad?” Carlos contended.

“Carlos, this isn’t like Arklay. Last time, it didn’t matter whether or not we had a full squad, we were grossly underprepared to deal with the situation.” 

“At least tell me you’ve got some backup in case shit hits the fan, which is almost a given with our luck…”

Jill dropped her phone into her duffle bag before zipping it up, turning to face Carlos with a telling look. Carlos sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jill, I gotta bad feeling about this. We’re talkin’ about the same soulless pricks who wiped out an entire city; you really think it’s gonna be that easy to take this guy in?”

“Of course not,” Jill replied as she hoisted her duffle bag onto her shoulder, “but if anyone knows their way around a Spencer mansion, it’s Chris and I, so you’ll just have to trust that the buddy cops can take whatever Spencer throws at us.” She grabbed her firearms case and headed toward the front door, placing her bags down near the hall closet to grab her BSAA jacket and work boots. Carlos was right behind her. 

“Look, I’m not saying that you don’t know what you’re doing, I just know how quickly things get outta hand on these missions--you know it too.” 

Jill sighed as she put on her jacket, slipping her long brown hair over a shoulder. “We’ve trained for that--worst case scenario, we’ll radio for extraction.”

“Well, at least you know what a radio is, right?” Carlos looked down at her with an arched eyebrow.

Jill paused while slipping on a boot, and gave him a half smile. She knew that joking was a coping mechanism for stress with him. “Would it help if I tried to text you at least once every few days?” Each mission was different, and sometimes they could take anywhere between a few days to a few weeks to complete. There was no guarantee that Jill would be able to manage texting so often, but even once a week would’ve been a relief for him. 

“Guess it’ll have to be enough,” Carlos relented, leaning a shoulder against the wall and crossing his arms over his broad chest. “We both know how Redfield loves to go no-contact.”

Jill put on her other boot and looked up again, unable to hide the annoyance on her face. “Would it kill you to call him by his first name?”

“No, but I won’t do it until you’re back safe and sound from this crazy ass mission. Until then, he’s Redfield. Can’t change my mind,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, took him two, three years to finally use mine, remember that?”

“Please,” Jill implored him while glancing toward the ceiling with a pained look on her face, “don’t start.” She stood up then, taking the hair band on her wrist and pulling her long brown hair into a low ponytail. “We both know it was--”

“Redfield being an objective dick wad?” Carlos said with a smile that didn’t reach his maple eyes. 

Jill gave him an irritated glance as if to say, ‘really, now you’re just being a smartass.’ Carlos picked up on it right away, looking down towards the ground before he spoke again. “Sorry hun, you’ve got enough to worry about without my dumb ass making things worse.”

She walked over to him then, tilting his face up with a finger under his chin. “I won’t tell you not to worry about me, okay?” Jill tried to reassure him in a gentle voice, “I know that you’ll do it anyway. All I can say is that I’ll be as careful as possible. If things go south, then we’ll have a sound plan ready for extraction, I promise.”

Carlos stared into her baby blue eyes, focused and unblinking. “Just promise that you’ll come back to me...please?”

The pain in his eyes made her heart ache, but Jill hoped that the mission would go off without a hitch, a feat that was much easier said than done when it came to Umbrella’s worst serial offenders. She knew making a promise that she might be forced to break wouldn’t be fair, so she responded the only way she knew how. Jill leaned closer and kissed him softly, coaxing him to uncross his arms and embrace her as he deepened the kiss. After a moment, she pulled back with her arms still wrapped around his broad shoulders. “Keep it warm for me will you? Can you promise me that?” she asked him, referring to their bed. 

“It’ll be a hell of a lot less warm without you, but I’ll try, how’s that?” Carlos replied with a smile that still didn’t quite reach his eyes. Jill only had a moment to ponder that however, since in a flash, his hands were grabbing her ass and hauling her off of her feet. “Gah!” She screamed in delight as she immediately wrapped her legs around his waist, letting him slowly twirl her around in the entryway. “How ‘bout the sooner you get that sexy ass back here,” he all but purred, “the sooner I can do this again, while I serenade you around the living room.”

She giggled as she kissed him again, “Well you sure give a girl a lot to look forward to, Romeo.”

“Romeo, who’s that?” Carlos replied, feigning shock. “I only go by Carlos, Wonder Boy or sex fiend ‘round here!”

Jill nipped at his earlobe, causing him to yelp and then kiss her once more, pressing her up against the wall. The kiss became greedier as Jill felt her back hit the wall, with her winding her hands into his thick curls as she hummed happily and ground her hips into his. Carlos hummed back, then let it turn into a growl once he felt her grind against him, before he reluctantly lowered her back down. He dragged his lips away from hers, panting, “Okay, okay, let’s stop while I still can.”

“Good idea,” Jill agreed while she caught her breath, “the sooner I get out of here, the sooner I get back to this.” Jill suddenly reached around to grab his ass and haul him against her once again.

They both laughed then, as Carlos cupped her face with his hands and gave her one last, slow and sultry kiss, Jill wrapping her arms around his waist. Their lips and tongues took their sweet time, like they had all the time in the world, and when the kiss finally broke, he kept cupping her face as the pair stood there for yet another moment. They kept their eyes closed and foreheads touching, their body language conveying every emotion they felt without saying a single word. Then, Jill’s phone began to vibrate in her duffle bag. “That’s Chris, no doubt,” she mumbled. “I’ll text you the first chance I get, I promise.” Jill finally slid her hands away from him, and Carlos backed up so that she could grab her things and head to the door. In lieu of goodbye, Carlos replied, “I’ll be impatiently waiting for you to keep that promise then, Super Cop,” as he opened the front door for her, watching her disappear down the hallway before shutting the door. Little did he know that almost three weeks later, he would still be waiting...

Sunrays beamed through the window blinds, and the digital clock on his side of the bed read 7:31AM. It was his day off, so being up that early was less than ideal, but Carlos got up anyway and went to the bathroom to go pee and then brush his teeth. He threw on a pair of sweats over his boxers and was ready to head to the kitchen, when his phone rang. Anticipation had him grabbing it so fast that he almost dropped it, but he got a hold of himself just in time to flip it open on the third ring. “Hey,” he greeted, not bothering to check the caller ID but knowing that no one else would be calling him this early, save for her. There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Jill?” Carlos finally said, still anticipating that it was her on the other end. 

“Carlos, it’s Chris,” the person finally answered, “I...we need to talk…”

The bad feeling from before Jill left returned just then with a vengeance, sending chills up his spine. “Redfield? Why are y-where’s Jill?” 

There was another pause on the other end, before Chris continued to speak. “Something happened on the mission, at the mansion. We arrived, and all the guards were already dead. We went in to investigate, and we found Spencer dead too...Wesker killed him, he killed them all...and then…”

The chills Carlos felt clawing their way up his spine had him trembling, as did a feeling that he couldn’t quite put his finger on yet. “What are you saying? Where the hell is she, Redfield?” he asked, barely noticing that his voice had gotten louder. 

“...Jill...she...Wesker was about to kill me, and--”

“Where is she?” Carlos asked again, realizing that the feeling rising along with the chills was his temper, red hot and getting hotter by the second.

“Jill, tried to save me, she...she dove at him, and then--”

“Chris where the FUCK, IS SHE?!” Carlos yelled, finally feeling his temper boil over. 

Another pause, and then, “Jill’s missing...She dove through a window with Wesker, it was over a ravine. I searched for her myself but...there’s no way they could’ve survived that fall. We’re searching for something, anything, but nothing’s been found so far. It’s like--it’s like she just vanished…”

Carlos didn’t realize that he was pacing the room until he came to an abrupt stop near the windows. The chills up his spine seeped under his skin, turning his veins into ice water, while his red hot temper refused to back down. “Vanished? She vanished, just like that? No...no, I don’t believe you,” he said, shaking his head and clenching his fist with his free hand.

There was a long sigh on Chris’s end. “Carlos, I wish to hell that I was making this up,” he responded, his voice getting a bit too quiet for comfort. 

“No, no that’s bullshit. She can’t just vanish without a trace,” Carlos said, his fingertips digging crescents into his palm. “I’m no cop, but wouldn't there be some evidence of the fall? Anything at all?”

“Of course there should be evidence, but that’s what I’m trying to tell you. There’s nothing at the bottom of the ravine, nothing but traces of broken glass.”

“Then there’s a chance that she’s still alive, right?” For just a second, Carlos allowed himself to hope, to believe that this was some sort of horrible misunderstanding and that Jill was somewhere near the site of her disappearance, possibly hurt and in need of medical care. He couldn’t tell which scenario was worse...maybe that hope wasn’t so pleasant after all. 

“Carlos, trust me, it’s impossible that anyone could have survived that fall, even Wesker. We...we’re expecting to find,” there was yet another pause as Chris struggled with his next words,” we expect to find a body at this point.”

It was then Carlos’s turn to pause, mulling over what he’d just heard and then honing in on one word--trust.

“Trust...trust?" he scoffed, "You’re asking me to trust you--you of all people?” Carlos heard the malice in his voice but couldn’t bring himself to care.

“What that’s supposed to mean?” Chris heard it to, sounding surprised by the sudden hostility.

“You’re asking me to trust you, after damn near three years of you calling me by my last name just to piss me off?” his voice was getting louder now, feeding his steadily rising temper. “You want me to trust you, after I trusted you to help keep Jill safe out there? And now she’s missing because of you?!”

“Look man, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen!” Chris yelled back, his own temper flaring now.

“And some things should never FUCKING HAPPEN!” Carlos bellowed in response. _This_ wasn’t happening. This had to be a longer, more terrible nightmare. A recurring nightmare of Jill killing him would’ve been easier than waking up to her being gone for good. His mind began to race; the whole situation was completely fucked up. The next day was their anniversary, and he was going to wake her up with breakfast in bed, take her to Central Park and take corny pictures on the big boulder; he was going to take her on a horse drawn carriage ride around the park and then hop a cap to Ribalta’s, then propose to her at their favorite table in the corner. 

Carlos was breathing like an angry bull, ready to charge at any moment. Later on, he would look down at his hand and notice how his fingernails had drawn tiny droplets of blood from where they’d dug into his palm. Another emotion began to well up then, one that he couldn’t put his finger on at first; then, he thought of her picture on his phone, the candid photo he took while she slept the night before she left. After they made love that night, Jill was lying naked on her side, her sex tousled hair cradling her face and shoulders, an arm draped across her breasts and the sheets exposing her bare bottom and beautiful legs. She looked otherworldly, and suddenly that sweet memory was tainted with the fear that she was no longer a part of this world. Fear...there it was, the emotion that at first he couldn’t name.

The next long pause from Chris almost had him yelling again, until he heard his voice crack. “I know…,” Chris said in a strained voice, before he cleared his throat and tried again. “I know this never should have happened, and I...I blame myself, okay? She was trying to save me from that mutant bastard, and she paid the ultimate price for my fuck up. I can’t change that now, but that’s why I’m calling you.” There was a noise in the background, and Chris stopped as if he was waiting for the voices near him to quiet down. Then, he continued in a quieter voice that was no less urgent than earlier, “The search party has been thorough, but honestly, they just don’t know her like I do, like we do...that’s why I’m asking you to help us search for her.”

It was then Chris’s turn to endure a long pause, before Carlos finally replied in a stern voice, “Just tell me where I’m going.”

……. 

It was another cold night in March, but Carlos was just glad that football season was over. He would’ve been lucky to grab a seat at the bar when the Giants played the Cowboys in the fall, even more lucky to not have to step in between two drunk recruits to break up a fight. This night, he sat by himself at a pub height table in the corner, downing shots of Cachaça; the bottle was way more pricey than it would have been back in São Paulo, but here in Jersey City, it was just another imported spirit. Carlos didn’t care either way, he just needed something familiar, something to provide some temporary comfort for the night. The new recruits were less rowdy than they were during football season, but they were still pretty raucous that evening, thanks to March Madness and college basketball. As a soccer fan himself, Carlos had never really gotten into any other sports, despite Barry’s attempts to make him a Toronto Blue Jays fan. 

One of the recruits stood out above the others, the most foolish and rude of the bunch--Donald Sergeson. That guy had walked into the BSAA’s training facility six months prior like he owned the damn place. Sure, he was decent with an AR-15 rifle, but he never took directions without some smart ass comment or behavior that boarded on insubordination. It was like he was purposely giving Carlos a hard time, pushing his buttons just to see if he would snap. As if he’d been summoned, Donny suddenly strolled over to the table and gave Carlos a light punch to the arm, “What up, Teach?”

Carlos didn’t even bother to roll his eyes or react to the punch, not even looking Donny in the eye. “I’d tell you not to call me that but you hate directions, right Donny?” Carlos nonchalantly responded. Goodness knows that being a smartass was something that was known for, but it was always in good humor. His red headed, gray eyed trainee on the other hand, seemed like he had an axe to grind, right into his trainer’s head. “Aw c’mon, Teach, we’re placing bets over there, maybe you could win and then buy us all a round of drinks!”

“Just because this place is eighteen and up tonight, doesn’t mean you get a grown up to break the law for you, pal,” Carlos replied before downing one last shot.

“Aw man, you’re no fun! Betcha you’d lose that giant stick up your ass if you got your stick wet,” Donny said with a smirk.

Carlos tongued the inside of his cheek, and began to tap his fingers against his shot glass. “Pretty sure my stick’s none of your damn business, Donny,” he responded.

Donny however, refused to let up. “That’s your problem, isn’t it, Teach? You’re still strung out over your ex, right? That chick, uh, what was her name again?”

Carlos squeezed the shot glass until he felt a slight crack. “Knock it off, Donny,” he said through a clenched jaw. 

“Oh come on, look I get that that Valentine chick was a big deal when all this shit started, but dude, it’s been eighteen months since she left,” Donny goaded him with a shrug, “when ya gonna move on?”

The bestial side that came out of its cave when it had the driving need to mate, rarely came out for any other reason, unless it had a bloodthirsty rage to unleash. That beast snarled under the surface, ready to pounce at any moment on its foolhardy prey. “I said, knock. It. Off, Donny,” Carlos warned him, slowly turning his head to glower over at his ignorant trainee. 

“Pfft, why? You mad because somebody around here’s not walkin’ on eggshells around you?” Donny egged him on, waving at the other recruits to emphasize his point. “At least I have the balls to say it--when you gonna get over it and stop pining over some _puta_?”

The beast roared and tore free of its confines, lunging out of its cave and headed straight for its unsuspecting prey. Before he could ponder the consequences of his actions, Carlos snapped his long arm out and wrapped his large hand around Donny’s throat, lifting him off of his feet before slowly standing up from the barstool. He watched Donny struggle for a second, beating his fists against Carlos’s forearm and elbow. “If I EVER hear you talk that way about _Jill Valentine_ again,” he warned with a snarl, “I’m gonna rip your balls off and shove ‘em so far down your throat, you’ll be teabagging ‘til you’re twenty nine!” In the next instant, someone was at his side and trying in vain to pull him off of Donny. Once he felt four or five other pairs of arms surrounding him, he finally released his grip and let Donny crumple to the floor.

“Holy shit, Oliveira, you could’ve snapped his neck!” one of the recruits cried out as they helped a still coughing Donny to his feet.

Carlos snatched his winter jacket from the chair, slipping it on as he eyed Donny like a squashed bug. “Even if I had, I doubt that would shut him up,” he coldly stated. To Donny he bit out, _“_ You wanna speak my language, huh, _Filho de puta? Vai-te foder,”_ before he stalked out of the bar. 

He stood just outside the doorway in the light from the street lamp, trying to calm his nerves before he went back inside and crushed Donny’s larynx with his boot heel, when Carlos heard someone follow him outside. “He was out of line,” Carlos said, presuming that it was one of the recruits about to voice their grievances. Instead he heard, “She was special to you, wasn’t she?”

Carlos turned to face them, wondering if he heard them right. “What’d you just say?” 

A brunette in a blue hoodie approached him, “That woman you mentioned in there, she’s someone close that you lost, right?” Her face was obscured by the shadow of the doorway, but when she walked forward, Carlos felt his blood run cold. At first he thought that the alcohol had given him beer goggles, but the longer he stared the more he recognized those eyes--those blue topaz gemstones, swirling in a sea of emotion that he’d drowned in years ago. It wasn’t the same delicate face, the same auburn hair, or the same tender voice that haunted his memories, but he’d recognize those eyes anywhere.

“Who--who are you?” he stammered out.

“I’m Carla,” she answered, stepping even closer to him in the light from the street lamp, “I see you BSAA guys hanging out here on the weekends; I don’t see you that often, but when I do it’s always with you in the corner, sippin’ on that same liquor. I always wondered why you seemed so...so put off being around everyone else, so reclusive. Now it makes sense.”

Carlos was still reeling from the fact that this woman had the exact same eyes as the woman who had been his world, ignoring the strange feeling rising in his gut (probably just the alcohol). “What do you want from me, Carla?” he inquired as he slipped his hands into his jacket pockets.

She pursed her lips as if contemplating her next words, finally saying, “Listen, I’m sorry if this is too random, but if it counts for anything, I know what it’s like to lose someone like that.” Carla paused for a second and glanced towards the ground. “My husband was a cop, NYPD, and he was one of the best, at least that’s what other officers said. I mean, they even called him Super Cop after he broke a big case wide open,” she chuckled humorously. _Super Cop_. That gut feeling became increasingly hard to ignore. “Anyway, he died back in ‘01, back when the towers were hit. I was pregnant at the time…” Carla pressed her lips into a hard line then, as if her next words were too physically painful to say. 

“ _Was_ pregnant?” Carlos asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Carla nodded as she began to cry steady tears, getting the rest of her story out in a rush. “The stress was too much, I was almost six months along and then...I lost everything that year, my whole world was gone just like that,” she sobbed. “Guys are such assholes around here, they ask me out and when I say no they throw my dead husband in my face, ‘isn’t it time you found someone else to take care of you, sweetheart?’ So fucking cruel!” She was full on sobbing now, bowing her head and clutching her stomach.

Carlos felt conflicted at first, but then his softer side took over as he stepped even closer to her, reaching an arm out as if to touch her shoulder. Carla noticed right away and finally closed the distance between them, leaning her forehead against his chest as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry to hear all that,” he said as he tried to comfort her. The alcohol was really starting to kick in now, and he knew that he needed to get home soon or risk spilling his own sob story to this woman. “Hey, do you live nearby? I can call a cab for you if you like.”

“No, no it’s ok,” she said, sniffing and dabbing the back of her nose on her hoody. “Actually, I uh, I live a couple of blocks from here. Would you mind walking me back home? I-I know it’s weird since I don’t know you but...I’m sorry, I didn’t even get your name, did I?”

“No, but it’s Carlos,” he answered, giving her a napkin from a pocket on his jacket.

“Got it. Carlos, huh? Your name sounds like mine,” she giggled, sounding a bit hysterical for a moment. “Well, I’m sorry to bother you Carlos, but would you mind? It’s really pointless to get a cab.”

The feeling in his gut reached a crescendo, but his need to be a helper to someone else was nagging him even more, plus he figured that he could easily hail a cab after he walked her to her front door. His survival instincts were yelling at the top of their lungs for him to just refuse her and go home, but they were drowned out by a malaise caused by too much alcohol and concern for this poor woman. “Alright,” he finally said, “alright, let’s get you home safe then...”

The next morning, Carlos woke to the sound of someone snoring. His head was pounding and his mouth felt like he had chewed on cotton balls all night. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Carlos swiftly noticed that he hadn’t slept next to anyone who snored that loudly in eight years, and that’s when he uneasily began to access his surroundings. The small bed wasn’t his, he didn’t recognize the messy bedroom, and the person loudly snoring next to him wasn’t Jill…

‘Oh god,’ he thought to himself, ‘the fuck have I done?’ He sat up then, and looked down at Carla as she snored, desperately trying to piece together how they had gotten in bed together. After he’d walked her home, he remembered her steps swaying more and more, and she barely made it down the hallway to her front door. She’d invited him in, and the only reason he accepted was so he could make sure that she didn’t pass out on her living room floor. Letting her use his arm for support, he’d helped her to her bed, where...had she kissed him? Carlos pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted, trying to push through the pounding in his head to remember the details; however, all that he could recall were blue eyes and her saying, “you can call me Jill if you want.” Was this woman for real? Had he truly fallen for some desperate attempt to use sex as a distraction?

Panicking internally, he looked around for a trash can in hopes to find--okay, there it was, a discarded condom. Carla had at least been smart enough to use a condom, at least one of them had been smart. He’d stopped using condoms when Jill started birth control back in ‘99. Sliding out of bed as quietly as possible, Carlos grabbed his boxers and pants, slipping them on while listening to and watching Carla to be sure that she was still snoring away peacefully. He slipped his socks on and grabbed his sweater, boots and jacket, quickly checking his pockets to make sure that his wallet, keys and cell phone were still there. When he confirmed that they were safely tucked away, he slunk into the living room and put his sweater on over his tank top, waiting to put his boots and jacket on until he was standing just outside her front door. 

One cab ride later and Carlos was back at his place, stripping off his jacket somewhere near the front door and trudging over to the bathroom without bothering to take his boots off. The sights and sounds of the early morning had his head pounding like a jackhammer at that point, so he grabbed some aspirin from the medicine cabinet. As he filled a glass cup with water from the tap, the sickly feeling that crept up as he woke returned with a vengeance. Carlos hadn’t slept with anyone since the day that Jill left on that fateful mission, hadn’t even considered a one night stand. He’d spent three months looking for any signs of her whereabouts with Chris, using every resource that the BSAA had, and they still came up empty handed. To say that it was discouraging would’ve been an understatement, yet the point of no return came when after the third month, the search parties had ceased and Jill had officially been declared dead. Chris swore up and down that he believed she was still alive, and yet he’d gone to her funeral. Carlos hadn’t gone to the funeral, since he believed that they should just declare her missing and leave it at that; however, a week later, he was walking to his desk when he saw Chris holding an obituary pamphlet, discussing it with other former search party members and funeral attendees. When Chris looked over at him, Carlos glared back for a minute before storming off in the opposite direction. He hadn’t said a word to Chris since then. 

Once he had two aspirin in hand, Carlos quickly downed them along with water from the glass and leaned on the vanity, eyeing his pathetic reflection in the mirror. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he scolded himself. ‘D’you even know who you are anymore? If she was here, she’d kick your sorry ass.’ 

She--Jill--was the main reason that he’d asked to join the BSAA in the first place, wanting to put his knowledge to use and help fight the evil forces behind bioterror. But since she disappeared, he’d become cold, distant, and disgruntled around everyone, still making jokes every once in a while but never laughing, and certainly never smiling. The recruits noticed, and while most of them gave him a wide berth and took direction without much of a fuss, he always noticed the side eyes and murmurs behind his back from coworkers that knew him before the disappearance, the ones that knew how out of character his behavior was. He barely recognized himself as he looked into the mirror, seeing blood shot eyes, scraggly facial hair and tangled curls lazily staring back at him.

Who was he without Jill? Was he still Carlos Oliveira, the clever guy with the quirky habits and constant boyish smile on his face? The guy who would risk his life to help a stranger in a heartbeat and had dedicated his life to training others to do the same? Or was he the guy who got shit-faced drunk on the weekends, threatened ignorant new recruits and had one night stands with women that he didn’t know? _When you gonna get over it and stop pining over some puta?_

The hand that was still holding the drinking glass suddenly reared back and hurled it into the medicine cabinet mirror, shattering both into hundreds of tiny pieces and sending glass shards raining down onto the sink and vanity. Carlos sank to his knees, his heartbeat pulsing furiously in his ears. A sound followed the breaking glass--a sound that he didn’t recognize as it crawled its way out of his throat. Was he screaming? He must’ve been screaming, because his throat felt like his vocal cords would snap at any moment. The screaming continued as he crouched down on all fours, letting the anguish of the last eighteen months finally sink in to the bone. At some point, the screaming gave way to harsh, scratchy wails and he squinted down at droplets of water that rapidly fell towards the bathroom tile--tears that were long overdue. Then, his back was against the wall near the vanity, and every horrible emotion festering under his skin spilled down his cheeks and onto his sweater, until the wails finally subsided and gave way to steady crying and soft sobbing. 

Carlos let his mind wander again, and his life ever since Raccoon city--his life with her--flashed before his eyes. He thought back to when he’d winked at her as they eyed each other when the train pulled off, knowing that when the mission was over, he would find her no matter what; then, she’d be in trouble, because he planned on charming the pants off of her (literally, eventually). He remembered scouring the hospital for the vaccine when she was infected, then being terrified that the vaccine wouldn’t work as he sat by her bedside and waited for her to awaken. He remembered their first time together in the motel, when she’d surprised him with physical affection and his opportunity came to show her how he felt, so he’d kissed her scars and worshipped her body like the divine creature that she was...is. He remembered her confession, breaking the dam holding his emotions back and flooding the valley below with everything that he’d felt for her since they met. He remembered the cabin in the mountains and rolling hills of that adorable German town, where they’d sipped on amaretto and set fire to the massive king bed as they burned for one another. He remembered them moving into their Jersey City apartment and having a “housewarming” party between just the two of them, where they got take out from Two Boots Pizza and he’d held her in his arms, her strong and beautiful legs wrapped around his waist as he serenaded her with rock ballads across the living room. He remembered finally taking her back to São Paulo to meet his folks, where his mom and even his estranged older brother had almost immediately embraced her as one of the family. Lastly, he remembered standing in the entry way with her, cupping her face as they leaned against each other, needing only body language to convey what they had treated as temporary goodbyes.

 _‘Meu amor,_ _Saudades de você,’_ he thought to himself in his native tongue, when his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a knock at the door. The noise startled him, and Carlos froze at first, like he forgot that he had legs. The knocking rang out once again, louder this time, and that finally had him standing to his feet and quickly splashing cold water from the tap on his face before cautiously moving to the door. Putting his eye up to the peephole, he assumed that it was someone from the BSAA here to reprimand him for his behavior the other night, yet he was still unprepared to see this person at his door. Carlos quickly unlocked and opened the door, stepping aside to let a disappointed looking Barry Burton inside the apartment.

“You look like hell, son,” Barry began, shaking his head as he walked past Carlos and into the entryway.

“You come all the way down here just to state the obvious, Barry?” Carlos replied, all dry sarcasm and no humor.

“Don’t bother with the smartass thing with me, alright? I was threw with it before you even knew what to do with it, boy!” Barry scolded, “Chris called, said there’s been some trouble brewing with you at the BSAA for a while now. Good thing I was in town this week, ‘cause it sounds like the shit hit the fan last night.” 

“Didn’t know you were in town this week.”

“Everybody knew, you just haven’t been paying much attention to anything with your head shoved up your ass,” Barry chided once again.

Carlos simply shook his head with a defeated look on his face, “Gimme a break, will you Barry? It’s been one hell of a night.”

“Well no shit, Sherlock,” Barry replied, nodding towards the sofa. “Wanna tell me about it?” He framed it as a question, but Carlos knew that he didn’t have a choice, and he said as much--“Do I have a choice?”

Barry didn’t answer, only walked over to the sofa and took a seat, placing his elbows on his knees, with Carlos mirroring him. Barry sighed before he began, “Now, I’m not gonna ask why you did what you did to that little shithead at the bar--I’ve seen his file, and even I’ve got questions as to how someone with a squeaky clean record would love to start shit as much as he does. But, we both know that the way you responded is far beneath you, Carlos, it’s not who you are.”

Carlos simply stared blankly ahead, gazing at nothing at all. “You sure about that?” he vaguely replied.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?” Barry asked with a frown.

No response.

Barry went on, undeterred. “Some of the recruits said they saw you walking away with a woman from the bar, did this ‘hell of a night’ have anything to do with her?”

Carlos suddenly stiffened, a move that would’ve been undetectable to the untrained eye, but Barry noticed it right away. “Is that what the puffy eyes are all about, hm?” he asked, his voice a bit softer now.

“Why are you really here, Barry?” Carlos asked him then, in a voice that was almost too quiet.

It was then Barry’s turn to stare off into nothingness as he recalled his biggest regret. “You know, I never did tell you why Moira and I have such a rocky relationship, did I?”

When Carlos didn’t respond, Barry proceeded to tell him of when he’d forgotten to lock up his guns at home one day. His daughters Moira and Polly were playing a game, and Moira got her hands on an M1911 handgun. She accidentally shot her younger sister, but Barry stupidly blamed Moira for his reckless mistake. Even though Polly survived the gunshot, Barry’s relationship with Moira suffered, and she still had PTSD when it came to handling guns. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t regret what I did, or that Moira still suffers because of me; but just the same, I can’t change the past, I can only control my actions as I move forward.” Barry then turned his head towards Carlos. “The point is, we’ve all done shit that we regret, but the only thing that matters is how we handle the aftermath. You've been through hell, Carlos, and even though everyone who knew and loved Jill is still grieving, you’re the one who lost the most when she vanished, because she was a part of your future.” 

More tears threatened to spill out as Carlos continued to stare forward, still refusing to speak. “Also, while we’ve all been relying on each other to cope with this, you’ve been hauled up in here shutting everybody out. I know that you’re still pissed at Chris, and I’m not gonna chew you out for that, but Rebecca’s been trying to reach out to you, trying to help any way that she can. Although to be honest, I think it’s high time for a change of scenery.”

That finally made Carlos swing his head towards Barry. “What?”

“Listen, you know that you’re family to us, but when’s the last time that you spent time with your birth family, Carlos?”

“Wit-you mean my folks back in Brazil?”

“Exactly. According to Chris, you haven’t left the city since you got back from the search fifteen months ago.”

“Perceptive asshole, isn’t he?” Carlos observed with a grimace.

“I won’t disagree, but that’s besides the point,” Barry said with a huff. “Take it from someone who’s been taking time off since that stint in ‘03 with Leon Kennedy, sometimes spending time with family is the best way to heal yourself.”

Carlos sat up then, trying to comprehend what he was hearing. “So, you’re saying the BSAA wants to suspend me, is that it?”

“No, of course not! I’m saying that maybe it’s time you got away from here, went to see your mother, hell, maybe even transfer to the South American branch for a little while, keep training new recruits while you're down there.” 

“You think I can just up and leave like that, leave the recruits I’m training now, leave...leave this place?” he said, his voice rising as he gestured towards the center of the room. Carlos knew that he’d messed up with the trainees, and that it must be worse than he thought for Barry to show up in person for a sit down, but this? His only choices were to transfer or be suspended in the form of some “long vacation” from his work? 

Barry looked him right in the eyes, with empathy in his expression...or pity. “I’m sorry about this Carlos, I know that you’ve got a hell of a lot of memories in this place, but you’re not doing yourself any favors with this self destructive behavior. Wonder Boy’s long gone now, and instead I’m lookin’ at a wounded man who’s one more bad decision from a break down.” 

After he stared back for a second, Carlos looked away once more and finally let those tears return. Barry gave him a light clap on the back as Carlos silently let himself cry. “I’m not gonna give you some line about it getting better, or that time heals all wounds and all that shit, but at the very least you’ll have the chance to find yourself again--to get your shit together.” 

That got a half smile from Carlos, before he finally spoke again. “Thanks Barry,” he said, swiping at his tears with the back of his sleeve. 

“Relax son, I don’t need a parade, just take my advice,” Barry replied with a headshake. It was Carlos’s turn to clap a hand on Barry’s back as the two of them embraced, another gesture of appreciation for the father he never had.

Before Carlos lost all his baby teeth, his biological father had left his mother Cristiana alone to raise him and his older brother Luiz. Luiz blamed their mother for their father leaving, and Carlos watched them yell and scream at each other for years, only for his brother to storm off and spend days at a time with friends instead of coming home. Carlos had been the one to comfort their mother and help her around the house during the worst of those times, which is when he promised himself that whether or not he had kids of his own one day, he would act like the father figure that he never had to people in need, defending the defenseless and trying to do the right thing. That was how he’d ended up as a Communist guerilla, holding onto a false hope of making a lasting difference when it only ended up leading to a death sentence. The one good thing about Umbrella recruiting him next is that they expunged his record; he’d also had some help from fellow U.B.C.S soldier Murphy Seeker in altering his appearance (damn Nicholai for killing him), so once Umbrella was defeated, it was finally safe enough to return to his birth place. When his mom called and Carlos broke the news about Jill, even then he’d clung to anger like a lifeline and refused to cry, vowing to his mother that come what may he would find her--Cristiana had cried for the both of them. Now he was headed back to his hometown, and although he kept that vow close to his heart, he knew that he couldn’t do a damn thing until his head was in the right place.

…... 

August 20, 2009--1:11PM

It was a hot day in São Paulo, and Carlos planned on staying indoors with the fans in his room on full blast. Cristiana had let him move back in and now that his brother Luiz had a household of his own, with a wife and no less than seven kids, he now had their childhood bedroom all to himself. Luiz stopped by a week after Carlos came home for a long overdue talk with his younger brother, also to introduce his wife Ana and let his seven children meet their uncle. He gave Ana credit, she had to be one strong woman to put up with brother’s temper and stubborn nature, and Carlos told her as much, resulting in a playful choke hold and a noogie with his brother’s knuckles on his scalp. His four nieces and three nephews enthusiastically greeted their uncle, all jumping on his large frame at the same time. It was nice to see that even though his own deadbeat dad didn’t care enough to stick around for him and his brother, Luiz was a great father. It was even nicer to have the comfort of his family around once again, after living so far away for so many years. Barry and Rebecca kept in touch with Carlos every few weeks, either to check on his progress or simply catch up, and he did miss them. However, this family reunion and return to his roots was like its own form of therapy, and over the months, the wounds on his heart and mind slowly began to heal. 

The South American branch of the BSAA was conveniently located here, making his commute a breeze. Carlos was nervous about meeting his new trainees, but they had welcomed him with open arms and he fell back into a normal pace in no time at all. He even started singing again on his days off, and eventually, he taught himself to play the guitar as well. Sitting back in a chair by the open window in his bedroom, Carlos strummed his guitar as he belted out “Shape of My Heart” by Sting:

_If I told her that I loved you_

_You'd maybe think there's something wrong_

_I'm not a man of too many faces_

_The mask I wear is one_

_I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier_

_I know that the clubs are weapons of wa_ r

_I know that diamonds mean money for this art_

_But that's not the shape of my heart_

Just then, his phone began to vibrate in his pocket. Carlos checked the caller ID, and his brows immediately furrowed into a frown at the name on the screen. “Redfield?” he asked as he answered the call.

“Yeah Carlos, it’s me, Chris,” said the voice on the other end.

“It’s been a while, what do you want?” Carlos wearily asked him. 

There was an awkward pause on the other end, and just as Carlos was about to press him further, Chris replied, “It’s Jill...Carlos, we found her. She’s alive!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Filho de puta= son of a bitch  
> Vai-te foder= Go fuck yourself  
> ‘Meu amor, saudades de você, ’ = I miss you my love  
> No, I don't speak Portuguese, I just have Google--sorry guys!


	6. Afterlife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reignite the flames <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay folks, I'm gonna try to keep the chapters a consistent length from now on. They may be a bit long, but I hope that you'll find this story worth reading as we delve into this fun lil' Valeveira world. Enjoy! And since I forgot to mention this last chapter here's a reminder: if you haven't checked out the Valeveira zine link, I highly recommend it; me and many other artists and writers are gonna rock this thing! More info. about it on Tumblr--my handle is @poemtomyself--but for now, click this link to learn more: https://valeveirazine.tumblr.com/

_Afterlife, oh, what a terrible thought_

_'Cause I've lived without you once before_

_We don't, we don't have to do this again_

_Please don't, please don't make me start this again_

_And oh my love, your beauty will consume me in the end_

_It was only ever you...my baby, it feels like a lifetime_

_Oh God, I don't think I could do two_

\--“Afterlife,” Nothing But Thieves (2017)

September 15th, 2009--9:02AM

“Asshole…”

Jill didn’t mean to mutter that word out loud, but it reverberated off the walls in her mind like the sound of a bullet ricocheting off of metal. It was the only appropriate word at the moment; she could’ve settled on a plethora of other expletives to describe the uptight BSAA doctor who insisted on being rude to her, but “asshole” fit like a glove. “You’re on your way out today Valentine, so no breakfast,” he had said that morning as he went through her check-out list. “Your ride will be here to pick you up in less than an hour, so don’t take forever in the bathroom. As requested, paper copies of your lab results have been sent to your emergency contact on file, and will also be sent to your email for your records. Is there anything else that we can do for you?” 

“Yeah, I’ll take a double cheeseburger with fries, double cheese and easy on the mayo,” Jill responded, her sarcastic tone clashing with her impassive expression.

The doctor left her room without another word to her, but made a point of telling the guard outside the door, “Make sure that she follows directions this time, no back talk.” Yes, Jill was unshakably confident in her choice of expletive for that guy. 

About three weeks prior, Jill had been placed in the rehabilitation section of the BSAA laboratory in Newark, NJ, having finally been rescued from her monster of a former boss Wesker and his destructive grasp. She was grateful for Chris and Sheva rescuing her from the West African city of Kijuju, even more so that the god awful mind control drug pumping device had been removed and she once again had free will. It was a miracle that Jill was still breathing, even more so that she was still healthy--mostly. Mentally, she was a wreck. The fact that she wasn’t allowed to leave the building and that she needed armed escorts to move around the limited free zones didn’t help, neither did being stuck for hours on end in a room resembling a jail cell rather than a bedroom, emphasized by a lack of windows. It had been a long month, but after she aced every medical check and lab test, BSAA scientists and doctors finally gave her the clear to go home...wherever home was now. She was just jumping at the opportunity to feel like herself again, which was easier said than done. 

Jill got out of the shower, toweled off and threw on her underwear before wiping the condensation off of the mirror, leaning on the small pedestal sink to analyze her reflection. For the first time in a month, Jill felt like she wasn’t looking at a complete stranger. The color had returned to her cheeks, even if she was still paler than she remembered, the dazed and distant look in her eyes from when she returned was replaced with a more focused and determined gaze, and she was getting used to the long blonde hair that fell between her shoulder blades. Thanks to whatever alterations the experiments did to her DNA, her hair continued to grow in that icy blonde hue, making Jill believe that even if she could dye her hair back to its natural cinnamon brown color, it would just keep growing out blonde anyway--if that was the case then what was the point?

Besides, her once natural hair color didn’t seem to mesh with Jill 2.0. That Jill hadn’t spent these past three years being treated first like a science project and then like a guard dog. That Jill hadn’t done damnable things under the influence of a mind control drug that still made her shutter, resulting in a new set of nightmares--nightmares that almost made her long for the days when her subconscious plagued her with visions of a horrific mansion, terrifying creatures and a burning city. At least back then, she hadn’t been one of the villains. That Jill didn’t have an unsightly scar on her chest peeking out from the hem of her scoop neck sports bra, serving as a constant reminder of such villainy, one that would’ve terrified her if she had trypophobia. That Jill still had…

...No. She shut her eyes and winced as she braced both hands on the lip of the sink and tilted her head down, trying not to let thoughts of _him_ float into her mind right then. Had it really been three years since she’d last seen him? Did he even know or care that she was still alive? Jill scoffed and scolded herself at that last thought, because she knew the answer to her own damn question. Of course he cared, that was a given; however, how could she expect that he’d be waiting for her after all these years? Did he even know that she was still alive? _I’d go through it all again in a heartbeat if it meant keeping you safe_...

God, she could use a beer, or three. That was hardly becoming of someone who supposedly had their shit together and was ready to go back out into the field. Chris had said that her one bedroom apartment was now occupied by someone else. Apparently, Carlos still worked for the BSAA, but he had transferred to the South American location almost two years ago and Chris hadn’t heard from him since then. Her heart sank as she got dressed and left the bathroom, her escort leading her back to her room (cell). 

As Jill waited for Chris to come pick her up and take her to the new BSAA funded apartment, she recounted what he had said about her new accommodations. The good news was that it was still located in Jersey City so she would be familiar with her surroundings; the bad news was that since she was a single occupant, it would be much smaller than her previous apartment. Jill hardly called that bad news, since she was just happy to get the hell out of any place that felt like a lab, a hospital, or a jail cell. It was unnerving to be treated like a hostile enemy instead of one of the eleven founding members of the BSAA; however, given the circumstances, Jill understood their precaution. Not only had she been presumed dead (although nothing ever stayed dead for long in their line of work), she had been forced to work with one of the worst bioterror criminals in the entire world. Worst of all, she had a hand in the murders of the Alpha Team and countless other people that preceded Chris and Sheva’s arrival in Kijuju. Interaction with other detainees (prisoners) wasn’t allowed, but she saw the sneers and hostile glares from the guards, heard the barely audible whispers between them, and worst of all, murmurs of the word that her guilt seemed to cling to like a vice--murderer. Yes, she may have returned to the safety of home, but she was still in hostile territory. 

There was a sudden knock at her door that distracted her from her musings; “Valentine, it’s time to go.” Jill immediately grabbed her jacket and went to the door, where her escort was waiting to take her down to the lab’s gated entrance. Chris was already downstairs--always was early to arrive for important things--waiting on the other side of the metal detention doors. She hadn’t seen him since he dropped her off after the mission was complete, and her only correspondence with him was through monitored email and phone calls. Jill went right up to him for a hug, and he seemed pleased to see her. 

“There she is, how are you feeling?” 

“I’m alright Chris, can’t tell you how eager I am to get out of here.”

“Are you sure? I overheard some doctor complaining about insubordination when I walked in here, and your name came up. They been treating you alright in here?”

“Well, if it’s the doctor I think it is, then he may have a giant stick up his ass, but he did give me the clear to leave so I’m not complaining,” Jill explained, giving him a slightly agitated look. Jill then sighed, “Chris, please, I aced every medical test and have a clean bill of health from every doctor in here (except for a psychiatrist perhaps),” she thought crudely to herself. “I’ve had enough of labs, hospitals, and people poking and prodding me. I’m just ready to go, ok?” 

Chris gave her a sympathetic smile as he responded, “Okay, I understand. And you’re right, you don’t need people fawning over you like you’re sick, I know you can handle yourself.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Chris” she said with a smirk. Chris nodded towards the large steel gate at the other end of the hallway, where one last security guard stood. “Shall we?” 

Jill put her coat on and smiled up at him again, “Lead the way, partner.”

The two of them made their way to the facility’s main entrance, which was at least a five to seven minute walk away from the rehab section and labs where Jill stayed for so long. Chris filled her in on new developments in the training quarter of the sprawling facility and how things were going with the new recruits. Chris was now Captain Redfield, a trainer for the BSAA's Special Operations Unit (SOU), teaching a new generation how to combat bioterror. SOU groups were larger than the two person cells that Chris and herself had been a part of before her kidnapping, but Chris was detail oriented and firm enough with the trainees to have them working like bees in a hive. Jill noted the pride on his face as he discussed his favorite trainees, and realized that it was the first time in many years that he seemed truly content. 

After the mansion incident at Arklay, their lives had been turned upside down and inside out in ways that still affected them and the ones they loved, including Chris’s sister Claire. Truth be told, Chris always treated Jill like family as well, but after losing their parents during childhood, he made sure to train Claire and turn her into the toughest girl in the world. Still, she chose to take a different route than her brother and help the survivors of bioterror rather than combat it directly, which is why Claire was now a member of the human rights agency TerraSave. The Redfields were vastly different on the outside but possessed the same fierce determination to save the world, and Chris treated his trainees like he was mentoring his own younger sister.

As they reached the main entrance of the facility at last, which thankfully had large windows spanning the front wall, Jill noticed that it was raining. “Oh, uh, my jacket’s warm but it’s no raincoat. Hope you brought an umbrella with you--no pun intended.” She hadn’t meant it as a joke, although even if it was neither one of them would’ve laughed.

Still, Chris chuckled nervously as he approached the metal double doors. “Actually, I brought something else with me.”

Jill eyed him suspiciously as she raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, like a present?” she inquired a bit uneasily. “Unless it’ll keep me dry in the rain, you really didn’t have to do that, Chris.”

Chris gave her an indiscernible look that only raised her suspicions, until he said, “Yeah, I really did have to.” And with that, he opened the exit side of the doors to the cool, morning rain and stood back as Jill peered outside, only to look like she had just seen a ghost…

The minute that he saw her standing in the doorway, he was out of the car, not bothering to put up his hood. Chris had told him during the initial phone call that she looked different now thanks to Wesker’s nefarious experiments, and at first he had a flashback to a dream about a blonde Jill with pale skin, doing exactly what Wesker had made her do under his control. The thought was frightening, almost like the dream was some sort of premonition, some sort of warning. ‘Damn him!’ he thought to himself, ‘I hope they tore that son of a bitch apart!’

Chris kept him informed of her progress in rehab, and when she finally had a release date, he took emergency leave from work and was on a plane with a packed bag in a flash, not even bothering to book a hotel room. He thought that seeing her in person would trigger the frightening feeling from his nightmare, but instead he felt like time itself didn’t exist. How could it, when he saw the same beautiful face of the woman he fell in love with in a dying city? That woman wasn’t the thing of nightmares, no, he had to be dreaming that she was gasping, then tearing up, then running straight for him in the rain. It had to be a dream that she shouted his name with the sweetest voice in the world, “Carlos?! Carlos!” But it wasn’t a dream, and in a flash he felt his legs finally propel him forward to stride up to her and catch her as she collided into his arms.

The sheer force of her leap onto him had Carlos spinning them around, and he buried his face into her wet hair, cold Autumn rain be damned. The yin to his yang had returned; he was forced to live without her for years, but it had also forced him to confront parts of himself that he had avoided for far too long. Forced to embrace his dark side and work out the kinks, he became a more balanced, stable man. Now that Carlos knew who he was, he knew that whatever life threw at him, he had the ability to heal from it and to move forward, and he chose to move forward with Jill by his side. 

Jill hadn’t cried, hadn’t even teared up once since Chris and Sheva rescued her, not even when her awful new nightmares of alien-like B.O.W.s and screaming victims made her stomach turn and fresh guilt threaten to overwhelm her; however, the second that she saw Carlos, she lost it. Although the sun had darkened his skin to a deeper shade of caramel, she would recognize his hulking frame and syrupy maple eyes anywhere. Sobbing until one couldn’t tell the difference between the salty tear streaks and droplets of fresh rain on her face, Jill burrowed her face into his neck, blurring both against his skin. The aroma of his own natural, warm and sumptuous scent filled her nose, and suddenly she was flooded with a million precious memories that made her head spin even more than his spinning them around did. Jill expected a phone call, or at least hoped for one once she was settled into her new place, but nothing could’ve prepared her for a surprise like this one.

Once he finally stopped spinning them around, Carlos slowly lowered Jill to her feet, squeezing her tight, crying himself, and unable to keep his lips off of her. He started with her hair, then he kissed her forehead, her closed eyelids, each cheek, and finally he crushed his lips onto hers, latching on like an anchor on the ocean floor. Jill kissed him back, her sobs turning into soft whimpers and her hands gripping his soaked jacket as if this was all some cruel dream and at any moment, she would wake up alone in the jail cell bedroom again. Time didn’t exist for her either, when it felt like not a single day had gone by since they were last together. For just a moment, the last three years didn’t matter, and every hellish thing that happened seemed like some alternate reality, when this...this was absolute heaven. 

Their moment in heaven abruptly ended when a voice behind them said, “Guys, it’s kinda chilly out here. We should really get moving.” 

Reluctantly, they broke their kiss, and Jill briefly turned towards Chris before she smiled and mouthed a “thank you” in his direction. Chris gave her a small smile and a nod as he walked over to the driver’s seat of the car. 

The third floor loft was bigger than Jill thought it would be, with a layout resembling a long rectangle divided by one large wall down the center. The kitchen, dining and living area were on one side, with the kitchen near the entrance and the living room near the exterior wall, and the bedroom and bathroom were on the other side of the space. Surely this building was a converted factory, since the exterior wall was all red brick and large windows and the rest was all drywall, pretty common for this part of town. Jill walked inside and took everything in all at once, happily noticing that the small space had high ceilings, the exposed ductwork framing the factory lights. It was raining harder now, bright lightning in the windows preceding the sound of quiet thunder rumbling in the distance.

As she crouched down to remove her boots, Carlos grabbed his suitcase and wheeled it in, glancing down at Jill. Crouching made her shirt ride up her back just enough to show the little dimples of her hip bones, and a sudden flashback stopped him dead in his tracks: _a cabin in the mountains, amaretto, 16 Volt, sexy panties, that ass, those hips, erratically bouncing on his--_

“You wanna grab that?”

Jill’s voice was like a finger snap in his face, snapping Carlos right out of his flashback. 

“Uh, what?” he asked, his voice barely masking his befuddled state.

As she looked back over her shoulder, Jill noticed how his face had trouble masking it too, immediately recognizing that familiar smoky quartz gleam in his eyes. Her long, wet hair fell over one of her eyes, and that only drew Carlos back into the scene in his head: _she was eyeing him as she panted, letting her mouth hang agape as she snaked her tongue along her bottom lip_ _, “_ _Do it now, and do your worst…”_

Jill arched the eyebrow over her one visible eye and drew out, “...Can you please close the door, Carlos?” 

One slow blink, another, then a few more quick flutters of his eyelids and Carlos finally snapped completely out of it. “Right...sorry ‘bout that,” he quickly apologized, turning around to close and lock the door. As she swiftly finished taking her boots off, Jill took a few steadying breaths to calm her racing pulse. She couldn’t be completely sure about what just came over him, but she had a damn good idea... 

While Carlos took off his own boots, Jill stripped off her wet jacket and hung it up on the coat rack near the door before venturing further into the apartment. In the car, Chris has said that it came fully furnished and Rebecca did the liberty of stocking the modest walk-in closet with new clothes, so the bedroom was her first stop. The room had a tall metal barn door in lieu of one with a knob, and upon sliding it open, Jill was greeted with the sight of her modern yet cozy new room. There was a queen size bed in the center with a wooden frame, two matching nightstands, a large dresser across from the bed, and a long desk with an office chair over near the windows (thank _goodness_ there were windows). The closet and door to the bathroom were on the opposite side of the room, and Jill hoped that whatever Rebecca brought would fit, or at least be comfortable.

Fortunately, both proved to be true as she observed the racks of hoodies, t-shirts, sweats, jeans, and cubbies of sneakers and boots. There was also a medium sized box slid between two pairs of pants, a box covered in pink wrapping paper and a black bow. Curious about Rebecca’s gift, Jill picked it up and carried it back into the bedroom, sitting on the bed and carefully tearing the wrapping paper. There was a white cardboard box inside, and she faced toward the headboard as she opened it, revealing tissue paper cradling a note from Rebecca:

_Welcome home, Jill!_

_I can’t tell you how much I missed you, and I promise to stop by and visit as soon as I can. In the meantime, I hope the apartment is comfortable, and that the clothes fit comfortably as well. Can’t wait to see you!_

_Love, R_

_P.S., just in case you have a certain handsome visitor with you, I really hope that you enjoy this special treat! ;-)_

Shaking her head in amusement, Jill put the note down on the bed and pulled back the tissue paper to reveal a matching set of lingerie--a tiny bralette with matching cheekies, both made of delicate black lace. “Wow Rebecca, you really outdid yourself with this one,” she said with a half smile. 

“Outdid herself how?”

Jill’s back had been facing the door, but she suddenly whipped around to see Carlos leaning against the doorway with his long arms. 

“Oh, uh,” she hesitated, hoping that he couldn’t see past her shoulder and into the box, “it’s-it’s a welcome back present, but she, I mean I don’t wanna show you just yet, is that ok?”

Carlos stared at her for a moment, his expression passive but his eyes searching hers as if he could glean more information from simply staring into them. Jill felt butterflies begin to dance in her stomach as the moment of silence appeared to stretch on for a bit too long, before she proceeded to break it. “I’m...gonna go towel off in the bathroom, change out of these wet clothes. You should do the same when I’m done, I won’t be long; uh, in the meantime feel free to help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen, if someone went grocery shopping that is,” she clumsily offered. Yet another moment of silence stretched on, until Jill began to shift nervously on the bed, when Carlos finally replied, “Okay...I’ll see what we have,” before slowly turning away from the door. Jill took a long, shaky exhale, realizing that she’d been holding her breath during that second long and awkward silence. Wrapping the present back up and running back into the closet to hide it, she then quickly grabbed some fresh clothes and headed for the bathroom, the butterflies in her belly now starting to die off and decay, turning her stomach sour. 

‘Did I fuck up?’ Carlos thought to himself as he raided the fridge in search of food. ‘She’s so nervous around me.’ He thought back to how he had faltered at the door, scenes from a provocative memory dancing in his head as he gazed down at her. Their phenomenal sex life had made them shamelessly unabashed around each other, but after their unexpected separation they couldn’t just pick up where they left off, could they? Glancing into the fridge, he was disappointed to find only water bottles and ice cube trays. “Great,” Carlos muttered under his breath, “non-perishables at least?” The cupboards were his next stop, and he was pleasantly surprised to find boxes of cereal, some small bags of coffee grounds, and cans of vegetables. It wasn’t much, but at least Chris, Rebecca, or someone had thought ahead. There was a coffee maker, plus canisters of non-dairy creamer and sugar on the counter, so Carlos searched for a couple of mugs from another cupboard and began making some hot coffee to warm them both up. Maybe that would help to loosen the tension between them as well, and to do some much needed catching up.

‘You _idiot_ ,’ Jill lashed at herself internally, ‘what the hell was that?! Now he thinks you’re afraid of him or something.’ Angrily, she threw her towel onto the vanity counter, too put off to admire the fact that this bathroom was a pretty decent size: there was a double vanity, a large shower, a toilet room on one end and a separate door leading into the kitchen area on the other end. Jill yanked her shirt off to toss it on the ground, disappointed in her sudden coy behavior around Carlos. He had seen her naked too many times to count, had been inside every sexual orifice on her body, and here she was acting like a freshman on a first date. Maybe they didn’t have to jump back in the sack so fast, but she should at least be comfortable enough around Carlos to show him one lousy pair of lingerie. Jill’s pants were off now, and she picked up the towel from the counter and started to vigorously rub her hair, when she caught her scowling reflection in the large sink to ceiling mirror. Her eyes went straight for the insidious scar peeking out over the hem of her bra, and she immediately stopped what she was doing. Was that it? Embarrassment over the scar? No, this was hardly her first time to have unsightly scars on her body, thanks to her risky occupation. Then what was it? 

Jill brought the towel down and unwittingly clutched it in her hands as she stared at the reflection of her scar, as if she had xray vision and could see it through her bra. This scar was different from the others from her past, because it reminded her of when she had been out of control and at the mercy of a lunatic. Control...that was something she was used to having, and it had been taken from her for three damn years. So then why did she feel guilty over something that she couldn’t control? When it came to Wesker’s evil, she wasn’t the one holding the gun, she was merely the bullet in his chamber. She shouldn’t let it make her afraid or embarrassed, but she couldn’t help it. 

Once her fingers felt like they were chafing, Jill realized that she was wringing the damp towel in her hands hard enough to turn her skin red. Chucking it to the floor along with her discarded clothing, she massaged her knuckles and thought back, way back, to how she handled the worst of her trauma. After the horrors at Arklay, she used grounding techniques taught to her in therapy, and with their shared trauma, the former S.T.A.R.S. members supported each other while dealing with the fallout from the incident. Then, when Raccoon City became the deepest circle of hell and her friends were either dying or too far to reach, there was one person who became an unlikely source of deliverance from the fiery depths. Back then, Jill’s subconscious helped her to sort out her feelings; this time, she knew exactly what she needed to do next. Jill went over to the door dividing the bathroom from the kitchen, and opened the door…

The smell of fresh coffee hit her nostrils the minute Jill opened the door, and she found Carlos fiddling around with something at the counter with his back towards her. When she reunited with him in the rain, his curly hair was up in a loose, high bun, and now it cloaked his shoulders as it air dried--it had grown longer over the years, almost as long as hers. He was still as enticing to look at as always, but he had stopped slumping his shoulders like he used to do, and somehow it made him seem even taller. As if he sensed her eyes on him, Carlos glanced behind him, their eyes briefly acknowledging one another until he glanced downward and saw that Jill was clad only in her white cotton undergarments. His eyes went wide for a second, and he slowly backed away from the counter and turned to face her. “Jill?” he said, framing her name as a question.

Jill briefly forgot what she was going to say, until a hand reflexively went to her scar as she wrapped her arms around her torso. “I um, I have something to show you, something to get off my chest, so to speak,” she professed, envious of how easy it was for him to make light of situations like this when she stumbled and faltered like crazy.

“Okay, whatever it is, I’m here,” Carlos softly affirmed as he approached her. 

‘C’mon girl, you’ve got this--it’s Carlos for goodness sakes,’ Jill reassured herself, before continuing on. “I’m sorry if I’m acting a little, well, weird all of a sudden, I just...there’s so much that I wanna tell you, but there’s this thing I can’t seem to get past. It hits me whenever I look in the mirror.”

“What thing?” 

With a steady inhale, Jill slid her hand away from the top of her scar. Carlos stood right in front of her, peering down at the marks above the hemline of her bra. “Are those...puncture wounds?” he wearily asked.

Jill simply nodded before she continued. “There’s more of these.”

“More wounds?” Carlos pressed, his look of concern starting to morph into a frown.

Pressing her lips into a thin line and then taking a deep breath, Jill reached underneath the elastic band of her bra and pulled it up and off of her body. She stood there topless, her scar fully exposed, unsure of what his reaction would be (weirded out? Disgusted? Turned on somehow?). Rather than look him in the eye again, Jill eyed the floor, her hands coming up to cup her breasts. “There was a device,” she explained, “shaped like a scarab, a bug. It had this chemical inside, a performance enhancing drug called P30. Wesker attached it to me, controlled it remotely to make me do his bidding.”

“How long was it attached to you?” Carlos asked, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

“I don’t remember exactly how long...two years at least,” she answered, still looking towards the floor. 

“Fucking bastard,” Carlos hissed out.

Jill then shot her eyes up to look at him again, watching as he eyed her scar and bristled with anger, his fists clenched, his teeth bared and his eyes going from maple, to smoky quartz, to black obsidian in seconds. “Yeah,” she then laughed bitterly, “from Super Cop to Super Soldier, who would’ve thought?” 

Carlos hesitantly reached a hand out to touch her scar, but Jill instinctively wrapped her arms over her chest, hiding the bulk of the scar once again. Instead of lowering his hand, Carlos gently touched her shoulder, stepping even closer so that his chest brushed up against her forearms. “Jill,” he implored, still frowning but speaking softly once more, “you don’t have to hide from me.”

“I know...I know that but…” she was unsure of what to say, how to explain the slew of emotions weighing heavily on her heart. “Carlos...I remember all of it. I remember every horrible thing that ‘fucking bastard’ made me do: infecting innocent people with Uroboros, fighting Chris and Sheva, killing BOU agents--I remember all of it. And every time I see this goddamn scar,” Jill was crying for the second time that day, unable to keep her voice from faltering, “it doesn’t matter how much I swear it wasn’t my fault, because I’m still guilty. The blood is still on my hands, and I can’t make it right!” 

Jill began to tremble, more so from the memories than any chill in the room, but Carlos still caressed her upper arms with his large hands. “Jill,” he tried again, his voice a bit more stern now, “remember what you told me, when we patched each other up after Raccoon? Remember when I blamed myself for half the shit that happened?”

With a blurry, teary gaze, Jill looked up at him and nodded, “I told you to cut that shit out,” she then replied with a half smile. 

“You’re not the monster here,” he continued, “you never were and you never will be. You tried to save Chris, and you ended up losing three years of your life to circumstances that most people couldn’t handle in their worst nightmares. You’re not the villain, Jill, you hear me? You were a victim, same as the others.” 

Jill quietly sniffed as the tears freely flowed down her face and onto her forearms. Victim--there it was, the word that she had refused to call herself even though that was exactly what she was under Wesker’s control. Her nightmares always painted her as the villain, reminding her of the atrocities that she unwillingly committed. Yet, identifying herself as another victim seemed wrong after what she had done, so her guilty conscience continued to retraumatize her in her sleep. 

The sound of thunder outside was closer now, and it rumbled through the ceiling as Carlos cupped her face and tilted it up to his own. “You were a victim, Jill, but you survived,” he said in earnest. “Jill, you made it out of _another_ impossible situation--you’re a survivor! You’re not just Super Cop, baby, you’re a fucking super hero!” 

That got a laugh from her, and as their lips met, Jill finally dropped her arms from her chest and wrapped them around his shoulders. Carlos reached down to hoist her up by her bottom, and she wrapped her legs around him as he carried her back through the bathroom and into the bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I legit almost wrote yin to his wang, same difference, huh? XD


	7. À l'intérieur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter the opposition...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter that isn't a flashback, yay! Now that time is about caught up, there's gonna be a bit more opposition, and yeah, maybe some more smutty things, XD but if you're confused about anything right now, trust me, it will all make sense in the end. Also, I really appreciate those of you who are already following the Valeveira zine, but if you haven't or would like to learn more, please check us out on Tumblr, https://valeveirazine.tumblr.com/, or come check out my own profile @poemtomyself for more info. Thanks for reading!

_If we could live in this moment and just hold it_

_Keep my head on your chest, I'll never leave this bed_

_The flowers will be blooming, the leaves will be turning_

_And snow will be falling while we're making love_

_And the sun will be shining, the flowers still are blooming_

_Then leaves will turn again, but time will be frozen for us_

\--“Frozen,” Sabrina Claudio (2017)

In no time, Jill’s back was on the soft mattress, Carlos enveloping her in his embrace without breaking their kiss. It wasn’t until she excitedly slipped her hands under his shirt to paw at his chest and back that he finally sat up, quickly stripping his t-shirt off and leaning back down to nab her mouth again. The feel of her supple skin against his naked chest immediately had his blood rushing below the belt, and he ground his hips into hers, letting the fabric masking the zipper on his jeans rub her clit through her thin cotton boy shorts. Jill hummed noisily into his mouth, and his responding growl rumbled in his chest along with the sound of rolling thunder as the storm drew closer. His kisses and nipping teeth began to descend her body, working his way down her chin, neck and collar bone, before he placed a gentle kiss to the center of her scar. Jill watched as he did this, the act causing emotions to well up and have her softly whimpering; she pressed her lips together to keep her tears at bay.

The chaste kisses around her scar were the last, because Carlos then grabbed her breasts and pushed them together, taking both her rosy areola into his mouth at once. He licked, nipped and sucked them as Jill arched under him, her gasp and subsequent moan almost as loud as the rain pelting the windows. After lingering at her breasts until they were nearly the same shade of pink as her nipples, Carlos French kissed his way down the center of her torso, ending at the hemline of her panties. His kisses resurrected the butterflies in her belly, and Jill perched herself up on her elbows to watch as he slowly nuzzled below her navel with the tip of his nose, then hooked his fingers under the elastic waistband and pulled the cotton down her thighs, kissing his way down her legs as he went. Once they were off, Carlos lifted up one of her legs and crawled back up; as he reached the apex of her thighs, his nose skimmed her pubic hair and he inhaled her scent.

“ _God_ Jill, I missed the way you smell,” he exclaimed. 

“Carlos,” she softly called, anticipation and affection causing her breath to quicken. 

He glanced up at her for just a moment as she breathed his name, the sight of her perched up like that--panting chest and flushed skin from navel to neck--almost too good to be true. One more second with their eyes locked, and then he dipped below to run his tongue from her perineum up to her clit, wrenching ecstatic cries from her that took him right back to the motel room they shared their first blissful time together. “ _Oh_ fuck!” Jill groaned, her fingers digging into the sheets. Carlos continued his indulgent strokes again and again, having been denied the taste of her tender flesh and savory juices for what felt like a lifetime. Growing increasingly unhinged, Jill writhed on the bed as she involuntarily tried to close her legs and lock his head between her thighs, but Carlos firmly held her leg up on his shoulder while pinning the other to the mattress. Once her cries became a bit horse, he then spread her weeping folds open with his thumbs and dipped his tongue inside, wallowing in her salty core and rasping cries before working his way up, kissing the soft, pink skin just below her clit, then enthusiastically sucking on her clit in a way that had Jill practically convulsing on the bed.

“Haaah, please, C-Carlos, _please_!” Jill frantically cried out, needing to merge bodies more than she needed her very soul. 

“Shhh, _meu amor_ ” Carlos soothed her, his thumb replacing his mouth on her clit, “We’re almost there.” 

Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a pair of Magnums, the golden foil briefly lit by a flash of lightning from outside. He didn’t want to assume that he would need them so soon, but Carlos was suddenly grateful for the last minute condom purchase at the airport. Jill took advantage of the brief reprieve and slid back further on the bed, hungrily watching as he disrobed and eagerly slid a condom onto his thick erection. The short journey further up the bed didn’t last, however, as faster than the speed of lightning he grabbed her ankles and pulled her back towards him. She gasped and laughed up at him as he slithered over her. 

“Where you think you’re goin’?” Carlos teased in a low, devilish voice. 

Jill wrapped her legs around his waist and slid her fingers into his still damp hair as she brought her mouth to his ear. “Take me for a ride,” she whispered back to him. 

That got a low chuckle out of him, and he reached down to slide two fingers in between her slippery vulva while his thumb went back to her clit, coaxing her to feed him loud moans when their mouths reunited. Jill had been on the verge of hysteria with his impish tongue devouring her sex, and as a result her patience was thinner than the sheets beneath them. Carlos was just starting to slide in a third finger while working his magician's mouth on a tender spot just below her ear, when Jill tugged at his hair until she brought his face back up to hers. In an urgent voice just above a whisper, she demanded, “Do it now, and don’t you dare go easy on me.” Ignoring the slight strain on his scalp, Carlos swiftly complied, slipping his fingers out of her covetous center and grunting as he slung her left leg into the crook of his arm. Fractionally, he shoved his cock into her, watching Jill’s face as her mouth widened into a perfect ‘O’ and her topaz eyes sparked like blue fire.

“Oooh, god!” she yelled, her tight cunt clenching onto him fast, having been denied the sweet feeling of fullness for way too long. 

“Gah, holy _fuck_!” Carlos hissed out once he bottomed out inside of her, years without stretching her out making it feel like their first rendezvous. 

Searching her face for any signs that he should ease up, Carlos began to undulate his hips back and forth, his cock sliding nearly halfway out only to bump back into her. It was slow and steady at first, but as he eventually sped up, the sheer motion of those oscillating hips was enough to shake the bed frame. Jill’s emphatic moans punctuated each time that he bottomed out, outshining the ominous creaks of the bed beneath them, and she raked her nails over his upper arms, shoulders and back while mimicking his lush movements with her own hips. Carlos snuck a hand up to grab her chin, tilting her face back toward his after one of her long, loud moans at the wall, and his thumb traced her lower lip like he was bewitched by the sight of it. She stared back at him with a glazed over expression, snaked her tongue out to lick at the tip of his thumb, then took it into her mouth and greedily sucked on it. “ _Fuck_ I missed that mouth,” he declared in a voice somewhere between a sigh and a snarl, before he dove in and ate up that mouth again, snaking his tongue against hers in tandem with his snaking thrusts.

The legs of the wooden frame rocked dangerously, with screws falling to the floor, loose hinges squeaking and the headboard pummeling the wall behind them. Neither one of them seemed to notice, too consumed with their own raucous noises and speeding up their surging hips and tongues, until the frame finally gave way with a _crack!_ The mattress and wooden slats underneath it slammed to the floor, and the combined force of his cock burrowed inside of her and the fall had Jill squealing into his mouth. That sweet noise seemed to break the last of his control, and Carlos gripped her with one arm and grasped the side of the mattress with the other, using it for support while he rammed into her hard enough to have Jill hollering towards the wall. Clinging to his shoulder blades and digging her nails in, she deliriously latched onto his shoulder with her teeth to brace herself rather than bruise him, like a rodeo cowgirl on an unbroken stallion. The jaws and claws on his skin spurred him on, and Carlos groaned while letting his sweat drenched forehead fall to her neck as their manic pace continued. The wind whipped the rain into sheets that lashed against the windows, and still the mix of gasps, grunts and concordant moans nearly drowned out the storm.

Jill nearly growled in frustration, so close to coming, and yet their tempestuous fucking kept her suspended just above the plunging fall of an orgasm. Nearly forgetting she had the power of tongue, she unlatched her jaws from his shoulder and leaned towards his ear, vehemently begging for release. “ _Aaah_ _fuck_ , close, baby please!” 

Carlos responded right away, letting go of the mattress to grab her breasts and push them together, latching onto her nipples and inhaling both into his own jaws once more. Jill’s orgasm struck as a bolt of lightning bathed the room in bright light, and she arched as her shriek echoed off the walls and mingled with a clap of thunder loud enough to make the walls vibrate. Her internal spasms jostled and squeezed his cock like an angry fist, and he released his own piercing cry towards the wall before his climax had him thrusting slower and slower as he filled up the condom, panting and burying his damp face between her breasts. 

Time had frozen during their merge, their hearts and minds suspended somewhere above the drum of the raging storm and the sound of vehicles scrambling to reach their late morning destinations under the chilly, watery sheets. Gradually, the sounds wrenched from their own strained lungs evened out along with their racing pulses, and they sank back down into awareness as time progressed again. Carlos was the first to move, sitting up on his elbows to survey his handiwork. Jill’s eyes slowly liquefied from hard edged gemstones to puddles of aqua blue, her blushing cheek instantly leaning into his palm as he caressed it. 

“Hey stranger,” he greeted, smiling down at her.

“Hey gorgeous,” she responded as she grinned back. Their subsequent easy laughter and tender, savory kisses made the afterglow of their reunion blaze brighter than the streaks of white light ripping through the sky just outside their amorous little world.

……

The coffee was room temperature by the time the lovers blitzed their filled mugs in the microwave to reheat them. After having used up all of the hot water in the tri-state area, going down on each other and christening the shower bench, Carlos finally wheeled his large suitcase into the bedroom and at the behest of Jill, claimed a spot for his things in the walk-in. The rain turned from sheets into soft pitter patter outside, the once steel gray sky becoming silver as the storm passed. Two Boots Pizza was still within delivery range, so one sweet Italian sausage, roasted peppers, red onions & mozzarella pie later, they were dressed in sweats and tees and curled up on the plush sofa in the living room. Carlos caught her up with life over the past three years, showing pictures on his phone of how the family had grown; the last time he brought her to his hometown, Jill had a chance to meet Cristiana and Luiz but hadn’t met his wife and then five children. There were photos of all seven now, along with their parents and grandparent, and Luiz proving that even though he was shorter, he could still play-wrestle his younger brother into submission--Carlos insisted that he let him win for old times sake. Pictures of birthdays and holidays interweaved with group selfies from São Paulo FC matches and BSAA trainees who passed their field tests with flying colors, all thanks to their jovial but diligent trainer. The tiny device crammed eighteen months of memories in a tiny package, his older photos transferred and safely tucked away on the laptop back in his room. 

In between cheesy bites, Jill cooed, laughed, and smiled at the photos, until a nagging question knocked on the door in her mind, a pensive look replacing her smile as she eyed the last of the photos. Carlos, as perceptive to subtle changes in her demeanor as always, noticed the change right away. 

“What’s wrong, Jill?” he asked as he laid the phone on the arm rest. 

Jill took a sip of warm coffee before speaking. “Nothing’s wrong. In fact, things are looking great, the family is happy, the trainees love you, and you’re doing so well. I’m proud of you, you know that right?”

“Thanks...” he fretfully responded, “...but you don’t sound too happy. Is it a bad flashback or something?”

The smile she gave contrasted with the unsteady look in her eyes. “Or something…” she confessed. “Honestly? Since I’ve been gone, your life has transferred somewhere else now; you went back to your hometown and made a home, not that I blame you. I suppose the old place had too many memories,” she speculated while toying with a loose thread on her t-shirt. “My question is, well...where do we go from here?”

Carlos tilted his head back until it rested on the back of the sofa, while his inner voice sang out ‘here it comes’ in his mind. 

Jill barely noticed, she concentrated a little too much on the stray piece of thread. “You’re doing well for yourself, and I...let’s face it, I’ve got a long way to go until I’m fully recovered.”

“Jill,” he angled his head toward her without lifting it from the sofa, “you think I just picked up and left spur of the moment, no plan at all?” His voice was gentle, but there was unmistakable determination on his face as he then lifted his head. “I didn’t just leave for a few days, just to pop back in, see you again and then get outta dodge. Don’t worry about the job, they know I took leave for an essential reason, and do you really think my folks weren’t over the moon to see us back together?”

Jill finally lifted her head and neglected the piece of thread in her lap.

“Carlos, I don’t expect you to just uproot your life now that I’m back. I mean--”

“Do you still love me?”

The question caught her off guard, and Jill found herself pausing for a second as if she had to process what he just asked. “What?”

“Do you, Jill?” he repeated, his eyes conveying a message that might as well have been ‘Don’t you look away from me until you answer me.’

Taken aback, Jill angled her body until she faced him on the sofa with one leg tucked under her, still gripping the coffee cup. “Of course I do,” she answered, unable to hide the surprise in her voice, “I-I never stopped loving you! It was memories of us that helped me through the worst of all the traumatic shit, those memories and hoping that you were alright. I just, I want to know where to go from here, how to move forward. Does that make sense?” 

_I can’t change the past, I can only control my actions as I move forward…_

The memory of Barry’s words floated back up from the deep well where the worst emotions of the past three years dwelled. Barry had been a voice of reason and inspired him to take the right steps to move forward with his life, steps that he took in stride. Carlos hesitated to share what his emotional state was like when he left, even though he knew that there was no shame in it. Grief needs to be felt, organically processed and then let go at a personal pace, and since that grief was gone, the path forward was a lot less narrow. 

“You wanna know why I left, Jill, besides too many memories?” he then asked. Anxiety reared its pesky head, so after swallowing to clear the invisible lump in her throat, Jill merely stared at him expectantly as she waited for him to answer his own question. “I was angry for months, actually it was over a year. You might not’ve recognized me, maybe you would’ve kicked my ass,” he huffed in amusement, “but yeah, I was pissed at everything: Chris, the search parties, the BSAA, myself, the whole damn world. Nothing could snap me out of it; then one night, this dipshit new recruit said something that made me lose my shit,” he paused, the memory causing him to angrily clamp his jaw.

“What did he say?” Jill asked him, curiosity causing her to lean slightly forward.

Carlos let his jaw relax with a slow nasal exhale before he continued. “A lot of shit--I won’t repeat it, but I immediately started to choke him.” He said it matter of factly, which disturbed him because he knew he should feel guilty over snapping with Donny, shouldn’t he? A small part of his mind laughed a villainous laugh from deep within the confines of its cave, while the rest of his mind quickly chained it to the cavernous floor and blocked the entrance with a heavy boulder.

Jill tipped her chin down towards the cup in her hands with a heavy sigh. “Jesus,” she whispered.

‘You gonna tell her what happened next, huh?’ he rudely scolded himself.

Having such a good memory was both a blessing and a curse, along with his blatant honesty; however, Carlos stumbled with telling Jill the whole truth, even when his conscience goaded him to just spit it out. As he told her about the next day, the crying, the screaming, and the talk with Barry, the voice in his head went from merely chiding him to cursing him out. ‘Just fuckin’ tell her!’ But he skimmed over it completely, choosing to focus on his true intentions for coming back. ‘Fuckin’ idiot,’ was the last thing the voice shot at him, before he promptly shut it up.

“I wasn’t sure what to expect when Chris called me, but when he said that you were alive…” his pause had Jill’s eyes glancing up toward him while her chin remained close to her collarbone, “there was nothing else to think about, no other decision to make but to get my ass on a plane. I had to see you, I would’ve done anything, everything just to see you, and now that you’re finally back home, then that’s where I wanna be.” His hand was at her jawline, tilting her chin up and soothing her flushed cheek with his thumb. “I know you have a tough road ahead of you, but no matter what happens I’m here for it, if you’ll have me.”

A tough road was an understatement. As she indicated in her email with Barry, Jill had been eager to jump back into the field as soon as possible without considering what she had treated as extenuating circumstances, such as her mental health and the hostility of other BSAA staff, let alone her love life. Shen then realized how unrealistic her expectation was, a person who was missing and then presumed dead for three years suddenly returning to work as if nothing had happened. The wounds were still fresh, literally, and if she continued to ignore them, they would only fester and rot like the flesh of the undead things she had been fighting for so many years. Recovery had to come first, and she could use all the help she could get, especially since the circle of people she trusted had apparently grown smaller. Therapy after Arklay Mansion wasn’t much help, and a therapist within the BSAA might be too biased; however, it was worth a try, and at least she wouldn’t have to worry about her experiences being chalked up to mere delusion or treated like metaphors for some deeper trauma. As far as the other BSAA staff, Jill of all people knew that trust was hard earned when getting to know someone and easily lost when betrayed, so winning back the trust of her fellow agents and employees was an uphill climb--one that with the right tools, she was willing to hike. In contrast, being with Carlos was more like being on a carnival ride that was out of commission until mechanical technicians fixed it; both of them were the technicians, so they had better get out their tool belts. 

“So...whaddaya say?” Carlos nervously asked after he dropped his hand to give her some space to make a decision. Even though they were back in the sack so to speak, he braced himself for whatever her decision would be, silently wishing for ratification instead of rejection. 

“Well,” Jill began, placing her practically forgotten cup on the coffee table, “having you here is a bigger relief than I thought was possible, and not just because we still can’t seem to keep our hands to ourselves.” A sly smile crept onto his face, and she held up her index finger and raised an eyebrow to stop him from whatever smartass remark he was tempted to make. “However, obviously a lot’s changed, we’ve changed. So, maybe we should ease back into this, meaning that yes I wanna be with you; but, we should figure out exactly how to ‘move forward’ like you said, in a way that honors who each of us is now, okay?” 

Carlos was still smiling as he nodded in agreement. “Okay then, your wish is my command, Super Cop.”

“Still calling me that huh?” she inquired with a smirk.

_You can call me Jill…_

An intrusive memory wormed its way into his mind just then, stealing his smile. He shook his head as if doing so would shake the vague memory loose and fling it to the ground.

“Carlos, what’s up?” Jill asked him, noticing his diverted eyes and puzzled expression.

“Huh? Ah, nothing important,” he deflected with a nervous chuckle; she noticed his reaction of course, deciding that it may warrant a later discussion of its own. “Just still can’t believe I’m here with you, after I thought I’d lost you.” Carlos brought his hand up to her cheek again, his eyes reflecting the relief and deep affection he felt over having the woman he loved back in his life. If she wanted to take things slow, he was more than willing to comply, sure that he would do just about anything if she asked. 

“That makes two of us,” Jill chuckled as well.

The close knit crew of friends in her circle would surely throw some type of welcome home party at some point, but this party of two was pretty lively already, and it was only day one.

……

The first week was a breeze; thanks to a perfect attendance record over the past year, and a generous amount of time given for emergency leave for BSAA employees, Carlos had up to a month to stay in town, and he planned to charm Jill into keeping him around permanently. Between coupled errands to the grocery store, a trip to a furniture store to buy a more sturdy, metal bed frame, strolls in Liberty State Park, cooking together and watching both crime shows and comedies, it was just like old times. Of course there was also another condom run, and by the seventh day Jill decided to see a doctor about a certain pill. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a bed of roses all the time, since the nightmares made it hard to sleep a full seven to eight hours. Carlos was still a grounding force to help her wake up through the worst nights, although she still sat up to pummel her pillow with jabbing fists to vent her rage, irritated that she had sworn off sleeping pills since RC. Sometimes sparring in the living room also helped, even when intrusive thoughts and memories literally brought her to her knees and into Carlos’ arms while she counted down from five to soothe her panic. Finding a therapist was easier than expected, since it was the same one who Chris had seen after Jill’s disappearance. Jill was increasingly happy that she once again didn’t have to go through her recovery alone, especially with someone who knew how to love her through it all, even though her self love had taken several blows.

More love showed up in the form of her friends at last throwing her a small welcome home party, with Chris, Rebecca, and Barry meeting the pair for a family style dinner at Carmine’s in Time Square. Chris called it a tourist trap, allowing Barry to push back with a swift rebuttal of, “Well I might as well be a tourist since I just flew in from Toronto, so how ‘bout less bitching and more binging on pasta, Chris?” Chris merely shook his head in defeat while the others laughed. As everyone caught up, he contributed to the lively discussion with talk of work, until someone steered it more toward “fun” topics instead, something that he wouldn’t dare complain about. It was just too comforting to have his former S.T.A.R.S. family all under the same roof for a while. Jill felt it too, even when the party spilled into the small apartment after her guests insisted on seeing it. Rebecca was the only one who knew what the bedroom and walk-in closet looked like, and was also the only one aware of the gift still sitting in its box in one of the cubbies. Jill thanked the BSAA advisor and dear friend profusely for the sexy gift, promising a present in return as soon as possible. “Don’t be silly,” Rebecca said as she lightly rebuffed the offer with a wave of her hand, “you deserve it, and besides, I prefer lab coats to lingerie these days.” 

It took another week until Jill was at last ready to try on the lacey ensemble. The occasion was a date at a blues and jazz club that also cranked out classic soul and R&B, a place with the flare of B.B. King’s on 42nd St. minus the massive size and large crowd. Only locals could find the place on their own, and although the lovers had grown up mostly on rock and roll--along with Sertanejo and samba for Carlos--living so close to New York had instilled a love for many other types of music. They had reservations at 9:30PM, and by half after eight, Jill was accessing herself in the bathroom mirror. The lingerie fit well and looked even better than she thought it would; two black ribbons of fabric in the middle of the tiny bralette crisscrossed into an ‘X’ on her chest. The feature covered the worst of the puncture wounds, the mauve, circular shapes puckering out from her otherwise smooth skin. However, ‘X’ marked the spot with this spot-on piece of lingerie, the slim ribbons giving her scar the semblance of a bold tattoo. ‘Tattoo, now there’s an idea,’ she thought. ‘I could wait for the scars to form keloids one day and then get a tattoo to cover them up.’ Hopefully the tissue wouldn’t be too lumpy once it healed completely, or that could make for a pretty painful experience.

Walking back into the bedroom to retrieve her thigh highs, she stood up, propped a leg up on the new bed and rolled one up, fastening it at the top with the garter belt she hadn’t noticed underneath the panties in the box. The iPod speakers were blaring the Queen of the Damned soundtrack, and as Jill pulled the other thigh high up her shin, she didn’t hear Carlos come back in from his trip to the dry cleaners. He halted misstep at the bedroom door, watching as she slipped the dark, sheer fabric up to her thigh. As if she could sense his presence, Jill stopped in the middle of fastening the garter’s tiny rubber grasp above her thigh and turned her head towards the doorway, a mischievous smile gracing her features when she saw his startled face. 

“Do that again,” he softly said to her, hesitant to step forward lest this be his mind playing tricks on him. 

Jill fulfilled his request, slowly sliding the hosiery back down and leisurely rolling it back up her leg. By the time it reached the top of her thigh once more, Carlos flung his dry cleaned outfit--plastic and all--towards the back of the sofa and finally beelined over to her, sending them both tumbling back onto the bed. Gasps and peels of laughter followed as he frivolously groped around her hips and thighs. 

“Hahaha, babe don’t start something we can’t finish in an hour, now let your hot date get dressed!” she giggled.

“Well my hot date has a damn fine ass,” he replied in a voice drowning in dark intentions.

More laughter ensued as his restless hands kept exploring and his naughty mouth found the tender spot below her earlobe. “My ass will be damn fine when we get back,” she guaranteed while cupping his face, “and then maybe you can slide these little things off with your teeth,” she finished with a whisper. That earned her one of his feral noises as he playfully nipped at her earlobe and neck before a greedy kiss had them reconsidering their night out. 

Fortunately, Jill’s resolve won out, and about forty minutes later they arrived at the club. The BSAA had provided her with a new state ID, so getting inside was no issue. With a black, flowy mini skirt, four inch stilettos and a cobalt blue V-neck shirt that showed off the ‘X’ straps on her chest, she was dressed to kill. Carlos was pretty foxy himself in a button down with matching dress pants and shoes, black was definitely his color. As the couple turned over their coats at the check in window and descended the short staircase into the subterranean club, they certainly turned some heads, yet as they strolled into the warm lighting of the venue’s brick lined walls, they only seemed to have eyes for each other.

There was a live jazz band playing on a platform stage at the front of the rectangular room, a long bar on the opposite wall, a decent sized dance floor in between both, and booths lining the other two walls. Tables were sprinkled in between the dance floor and booth walls, but the hostess led the couple to a snug little booth in the corner. The night was still early for the club scene, so it wasn’t too crowded yet. As they cozied up to each other in the both, a server soon came over to take their drink orders, temporarily blocking the view of the woman sitting at the far end of the bar, who was quite preoccupied with watching them. To the unsuspecting eye, she was just another sharply dressed patron, her strapless red midi dress and matching heels catching the attention of men as they passed her on her bar stool. She ignored them all, choosing to face toward the stage as she spied on the pair, watching as they drank, laughed, and happily conversed with each other like they were the only two people in the room. While the bartender poured her a second vodka cranberry, she noted how the man had disappeared for quite some time, precisely eighteen months. Before picking up her drink, she took her cell and began texting the only number on the contact list:

_-They’re here, just arrived._

_-And? You remember your part, right?_

_-Of course I do, I’m just waiting for the right time to pounce._

_-Well, don’t wait too long or you won’t get paid._

_-Patience, please. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I expect to be paid on time._

_-Just get it done, and don’t be a stranger._

The drummer in the band started up the beat of Al Green’s rendition of "I Can't Get Next to You," and when the saxophone players in the band blared out the first few chords, the room lit up like a Christmas tree. Patrons occupied the dance before the song began, but they then flocked to the center of the room in droves. She put her phone down and picked up the cocktail, lazily stirring the ice in the little red drink as she watched the happy couple head to the dance floor. The sensual vibe in the room went up a few notches, and she casually sipped on her drink as dips, grinds, turns and twists took over the space, a sexy little show for a voyeuristic scoundrel, although her sole focus lasered in on one particular pair. The lead singer and their back ups crooned to the crowd, “Oh I, my, my, my, my,” and the man appeared to whisper something into the blonde’s ear--the lyrics perhaps? Whatever it was, it made her throw her head back and laugh as she threw her arms around his shoulders. Dancing couples spun around them, some briefly taking them out of her line of sight, but she always found them after a few moments. At one point, the blonde turned around and ground her bottom into his groin; his hand slid up her thigh to briefly reveal one of her garter straps, and the woman in red scoffed. It wasn’t out of jealousy, not exactly, it was more of an indignant jab. ‘Ha, amateur,’ she mused. Under different circumstances, she could teach this greenhorn a thing or two about seduction.

By the time the song and her drink were finished, she watched them share a steamy kiss before walking arm and arm back to their booth, and she subsequently closed out her tab and made her move. Tossing her dark curls over her shoulder, she sauntered over towards their booth, her features swiftly going from impassive to wholly engaged. 

“Oh my god, Carlos, is that you?” Carla greeted with a smile. Carlos looked up, his smile slowly sinking as his eyes widening first with a confused expression, and then with shock. Carla’s smile only grew as she excitedly stepped up to the edge of the table. “Wow, it’s so good to see you! How long has it been, a year or something?”

“...Carla?” he replied with her name, trepidation making him drag out the syllables.

Of course he remembered her name with his blessing and curse of a good memory. Jill said nothing just yet, confusedly glancing between the two of them, noting the similar names. Was she a relative? Her eyes almost looked like her own, except that they were brown. 

“Oh my god you _do_ remember me!” Carla exclaimed, happily bouncing in place. “I tried to call you, but did your number change or something? I went back to the bar the next night and those other BSAA guys said that you left.”

“I never gave you my number,” he asserted.

“Carlos?” Jill finally said, eyeing him warily while she assessed the situation. So, this woman’s name was Carla, she knew that he worked for the BSAA, and she supposedly had his number...interesting. Did this have something to do with how he zoned out the previous week?

Carlos turned toward her as if he was about to explain something when the woman spoke to her first. “Sorry hun, where’s my manners? I’m Carla, what’s your name?”

“Nice to meet you, Carla” Jill warily responded sans her name, “how can we help you?” 

“I’m so sorry, am I being rude? I didn’t wanna interrupt your little date, I just wanted to catch up with this handsome fella’ here. He sure is a charmer, ain’t he?”

“I suppose…” Jill suspiciously replied, turning back to the charmer in question. The buzz from her Cosmo had worn off, and a hollow feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. 

Carlos finally spoke to her again with an almost mortified expression on his face, “Jill, I--”

“Wait, your name’s Jill?” Carla interjected. “As in the ex? I thought you said she was dead!”

“Whoa, Carla, I never said that!” Carlos yelled as he stood up and towered over her. A bit louder and the booth one spot over would’ve heard him over the music.

The room spun...the pit in Jill’s stomach became an empty void as she tried to process what she just heard. Who the hell was this person? How exactly did she know Carlos, and how did she know about her once presumed death? Her eyes rapidly darted back and forth between them as they bickered, the bile in her belly beginning to rise. 

“You said you lost her, that’s why you choked that jerk out in the first place!” Carla threw back at him.

“I never said that, you assumed and then told me that you were a widow,” he accused while he angrily pointed his index finger at her.

“Well then why’d you even bother walkin’ me home, huh?”

“Because you asked me to, why the hell else would I go with you?!”

She huffed and braced her hands on her hips. “Well I dunno, ‘causa ya seemed like this perfect gentleman, gave me a hug and all when ya could’ve just dissed me like those other assholes?”

“You were drunk, I just made sure you got home safe, that’s all!” he insisted.

“Well that’s not all ya did, is it lover boy?” she accused him with a raised eyebrow. “Or do you not remember when you asked if you could call me Jill while ya fucked me?!” 

“Carla!” he bellowed.

That one was loud enough to be heard over the band, the next booth poking their puzzled faces past the red leather of the back rests. There it was...beyond a shadow of a doubt. Jill had a gnawing feeling this situation had something to do with either dating or sex, but call her Jill? What the hell was going on? Was this a waking nightmare?

Carlos ground his teeth and clenched his fists, the beast beating the floor with its chains, begging to be freed from its dark, dank confines. “No. You said that shit,” he growled. “You came onto me, you initiated, so why the fuck are you lying now?”

“I’m lying?!” she countered. “You said she was dead, remember?!”

A humorless laugh escaped his throat. “You’re unbelievable. What the hell do you want, Carla? Why are you doing this?”

“Well maybe I just wanted to get your attention,” she admitted as she crossed her arms under her chest, “ya know, since you up and left a girl hangin’ for, I dunno, a whole fuckin’ year?” 

He coldly rolled his eyes up and down her frame, taking in her attire. “Attention, huh? Looks like you’re a pro at getting that already. Wonder what makes me so fuckin’ special, and where’s those blues of your huh? That the only fake thing about you, or is there more?” 

Carla’s smug look dropped, his words hitting a bit too close to home. Once she stopped retaliating, Carlos spared a glance in Jill’s direction, only to find that the booth was empty. “Shit,” he breathed, before calling out to her, “Jill? Jill?!” He looked around, frantic at first, until he caught her rounding the corner in the hallway leading to the restrooms. Pushing past Carla, he hastily followed her down the hall. ‘Fuckin’ idiot,’ his mind taunted him like it did his first day back. It was time for some much needed damage control. 


	8. Heart to Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble in paradise?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ngl, this is my second favorite smutty part XD  
> Follow me @poemtomyself on Tumblr (@poemtomyself888 on Twitter) for Valeveira zine updates, I just posted a preview of some art and will be posting more in the next few weeks! Thanks for reading, and please feel free to leave a comment, I love those!

_But I threw you the obvious just to see_

_If there's more behind the eyes of a fallen angel_

_Eyes of a tragedy..._

_Here I am expecting just a little bit too much from the wounded_

_But I see, see through it all, see through, see you_

\-- “Three Libras,” A Perfect Circle (2000)

The club had two gender neutral restrooms. Since the night was still early, both were thankfully free of lines, something Jill gratefully acknowledged as she rushed to the first of these rooms. After she knocked and waited a second for a yell on the other side which didn’t come, she jiggled the handle and walked into the cozy space. A large sink, vanity and mirror were immediately across from the door, with the toilet tucked in the corner like an afterthought. Jill strode up to the vanity and slammed the door behind her, tossing her little black satin clutch at the corner of the vanity meeting the wall. 

Bracing her palms on the laminate counter, she let her normally analytical, more rational side take a back seat as her mind became a swirling maelstrom, sucking her previously cheerful mood deep down into its watery spiral. Why hadn’t he said something about that woman earlier, especially since he had slept with her? Why the hell did he tell Carla about her disappearance? And when the fuck did he start hiding things from her? Carlos had never done anything like this, always honest to a fault and upfront about the things he had either witnessed or done in his past. 

Everything was out in the open between them: from his past as a guerilla and how Umbrella had saved him from certain death, to the alterations to his features, even how aside from various sexual encounters during his chaotic teen years, she was his first real relationship. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise her that he sought comfort while he was still grieving, but then there was that line about Jill’s name…was it some type of roleplay for them? 

The thought almost made the Cosmo she was still digesting come back up to greet her and paint the vanity pink. One bitter thought kept swirling on the surface of the maelstrom, stubbornly fighting and refusing to get sucked into the powerful current--all of this could’ve been avoided if he just said something when he had the chance. 

A knock at the door distracted her from her heavy musings. “Jill? Jill, please, I’m sorry; can we talk?” Carlos pleaded with her through the door. Talk, really? _Now_ he wanted to talk?

“I’ll be out in a minute,” she said a bit too loudly. 

Just then, the silver handle turned and she watched through the mirror as he opened the door and walked in, silently cursing herself for not locking it beforehand. ‘So much for boundaries, huh?’ she thought bitterly.

Carlos leaned against the back of the door, still giving her some space in the small room. “Shit,” he breathed, “Jill...I’m sorry. I should’ve said something. I should’ve told you.” 

She stared towards the bottom of the mirror, refusing to meet his reflection in the eyes ever since he invaded her privacy. “No shit,” was her spiteful reply. 

Carlos licked his lips and swallowed, carefully choosing his next words. “Look we, I was only with her once. The night at the bar where I choked Donny, I yelled at him...she overheard me say your name, that’s how she knew it.”

Jill said nothing as she absorbed his words, and he continued to try and explain himself; “She followed me outside, started crying, told me she lost her husband and had a miscarriage. She asked me to walk her home, thought she was drunk so I said yes, and then…” he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, but it was fairly easy to fill in the blanks. 

Somewhere behind blue eyes, a siren let her powerful tail whip its way through the churning maelstrom, clawing her way up the sandy ocean shelf near the shoreline and up towards the surface. Jill’s splayed fingers slid into fists on the countertop. 

“Jill, I’m sorry,” Carlos tried to apologize again as he approached her, “I’m so sorry. Please--” he froze after his hand almost reached her shoulder and she flinched, breathing even harder now and shrugging away from him. If she wasn’t determined to keep her gaze down, she would’ve seen the wounded look in his sweet maple eyes as he slowly brought his hand back down to his side. “Please,” he softly implored her, “would you at least look at me?”

The siren hiding behind her glassy cornea bared her sharp teeth, stalking just below the surface, ready to breach it at any moment. The creature would either start to scratch or screech once there, and she finally dragged her eyes upwards towards the startled man in the mirror. The glower she gave him was meant to be a warning, but Carlos saw it as more of a warning shot, and he carefully backed away from her. The timing couldn’t have been worse; he had less than a month to convince Jill to take their relationship back to the level it was before her abduction, and this one bump in the road was causing a canyon sized rift between them. At any point during the previous two weeks he could’ve told her about Carla, about the one stupid night when he had been in a vulnerable position and used sex as a coping mechanism. Knowing his romantic partner well, he knew that this wouldn’t have been a problem if he had just told her about that night before it blew up in both of their faces, but his window of opportunity was forcibly shut. 

Casting his gaze downward, he turned to face the door, leaning a forearm and his forehead against it. “Goddamnit,” he whispered, forcing his eyes shut and restraining himself from knocking his thick head against the wooden surface. The first day at the apartment, he thought that his little moment at the door had rubbed Jill the wrong way, some sort of a fuck up on his part, but that moment looked trivial in comparison to this dramatic turn of events. It would’ve been easier if she yelled, cussed, threw her purse at him, even cried, any reaction other than shunning his touch. Would this cold shoulder treatment continue for the rest of the night? Would he be sleeping on the sofa? Possibly on a plane back to his room in São Paulo in the next few days? He would do whatever she asked, no question, desperately hoping for the chance to make it up to her somehow. There had been rage in her eyes, but there was also hurt bleeding out behind them, and even though he hated himself just then for causing such hurt, Carlos longed to hold her in his arms and soothe her pain.

All of a sudden, he heard the click-clack of stilettos make their way over to where he stood. He opened his eyes but didn’t turn around, anxiously awaiting her response and possible rejection, when she surprised him by pressing an upward facing palm to the small of his back. This unexpected physical contact caught him off guard, and anticipation steadily rose up his spine. Jill’s palm stayed there for a beat before her hand traveled around his side, soon joining her other hand as they simultaneously wrapped around his torso. Stepping even closer, her palms pressed into his chest as she exhaled and leaned into his back, pressing her cheek into the base of his neck. The situation had swiftly gone from cold shoulder to cuddly and affectionate; although Carlos was a bit confused as to why, he was just relieved that she somehow found comfort in something right then, and if that was his body, then so be it.

What he didn’t anticipate was the feel of her hands deliberately slithering lower, down past his belly button and then below his belt. Moments later, she wrapped her fingers around him through his slacks, sliding her hand up and down and pressing into him from behind. “Wh-what are you...Jill?” he asked, his voice raising to a higher pitch.

Jill tugged at the hem of his shirt with one hand, untucking it from his pants and slipping her warm palm under it to press against his taut belly, while her lower hand deftly undid his belt. Once she made short work of his button and zipper, her fingers descended into the waistband of his boxers and made skin to skin contact with his increasingly hard cock. Long, shaky exhales accompanied the swell of his rising and falling chest under her ascending hand as it slid higher still, alternating between squeezing each of his pecs, caressing his tight ab muscles and toying with the hair from his chest down to his happy trail. Soft kisses to the base of his neck accompanied adept squeezes to his cock, pumping out a bit of warm, viscous liquid onto her palm, spreading it up and down his firm shaft. “ _Oooh_ ,” was the only shaky sound Carlos could manage as his chest quivered under her other palm, pressing both gooseflesh ridden arms into the door beside his forehead now, hesitant to touch her and break the spell she had over him. Using his body for comfort like this wasn’t what he expected and yet he refused to stop her, not caring that they were in a public space, even letting it excite him further. 

Jill was all over him, caging him as she ground her hips into his backside and slid her shin up and down a pant leg, hooking her calf onto his thigh only to drag it back down mere moments later. Her strokes corkscrewed over his cock as she serviced him, using his own leaking fluids to keep her palm wet, then switched up to tight squeezes with her thumb and forefinger down to the tip before flipping her fingers and running all five back upwards, milking him for more. “ _Fuck_ , oh God” he breathed, his voice an even higher pitch than before. The strained noises her talented hands wrung from him had the siren dancing near the undertow, ready to drag him under at any moment. She had never done anything like this before, let alone to him, and she basked in these new noises as they echoed off the subway tiled walls in the tiny space. At one point, she switched up yet again, pausing the strokes to squeeze her fist around his shaft in tandem with the pulsing veins under her fingers, mimicking his rapid heart beat.

Carlos leaned his head back and moaned long and high towards the vent in the ceiling, the nape of his neck touching her forehead. When it came to their sex life, it was rare for Jill to be the dominant one, as she loved being able to trust someone enough to give up control; however, their position limited his movement and left him completely at her mercy, and as her skillful hand sped up and the erotic noises grew louder, he gradually climbed higher towards losing all control in her nimble fingers. Jill had always been a fierce, sexy goddess in his eyes, but this session displayed such reverence for his body, and Carlos was so awash in sensation that he was ready to bend to her will.

Grinding against him caused her skirt to lift just high enough for the thin cotton gusset on her lace cheekies to press against the firm curves of his ass, an enticing heat despite the three layers of fabric separating their warm bodies. He was in the front seat of a roller coaster ride, his heart in his throat, climbing higher still and about to take the thrilling plunge over the first crest, when she gradually began to slow her pace, pulling him back down towards the base of the hill. He was so close to whimpering in protest that he squinted and hissed through clenched teeth, trying to gain some semblance of control back. A moment later, she snatched control from him once again by gathering more precum in her palm and repeating every single motion: from fast, hard strokes to long and slow ones, squeezing from base to tip, and pulsing along with his heartbeat. 

Time didn’t matter anymore as Carlos lost himself to gasps, ardent moans, vulgar phrases in both English and Portuguese, and sharp hisses between clenched jaws. Each time he was lifted up towards the top of that hill, the ride would be dragged back down to the start, until he intermittently beat the door with a fist out of frustration and too much stimulation at once. Just as he reached the point where he couldn’t take anymore of this sensual torment, a low voice broke through the rhythm of his roaring pulse, forlorn moaning and vulgar curses to beat at his eardrums. Consciousness sank back in as the ride slid backwards once more, and he was obscurely aware of her hand slowing its pace enough to bring his attention back into the moment.

“Wh-what d’you say?” he panted back towards her.

Jill’s response was like a frigid gust of arctic air as she hissed, “Don’t. Ever. Hide shit from me. Again. ”

Her face had moved to his shoulder, and she glared up at him as a mix of lust and vindictive resolve marred her beautiful features. The siren had finally breached the surface, and she was crooning a sweet and haunting melody that called to the thing lurking in its cave. Behind his eyes it burst free of its chains at last, fueled by the desire to follow that sweet noise wherever it led. On the other hand, realization of what she had just said and done sank in, and his rational side was up in arms as well. This wasn’t just about sex, something he should’ve know once it commenced, this was revenge at its worst. It was manipulation, continuously bringing him close to the edge only to drag him back down to Earth before he could take the plunge, no longer a warning shot, but rapidly firing rounds at point blank range. This was how she wanted to handle this, knowing that her touch was his Achilles heel? Okay, fine then. The ride seemed to be over before it even began, but he refused to leave his seat.

Carlos immediately grabbed her wrist, yanked it out of his pants and spun Jill around him until her back hit the door. Their roles reversed, he braced his hands on either side of her head and glowered back at her, his smoky quartz eyes boring into her icy blues. “The fuck are you doing, Jill? You jerkin’ me around to punish me, huh?” he chastised her.

His petty lover said nothing, choosing only to flick her eyes between his stare and his angrily panting lips. The siren sat up in the water, flirting with and flicking her tail at the beast on the shore, daring him to join her in the waves. The clever creature paced on all fours in the sand, suddenly hesitant to take the plunge; did she simply wish to mate or drag him under to his impending doom? Deciding to risk it, he tentatively brought his lips to hers, only to feel the sting of sharp canines snap into his bottom lip almost hard enough to draw blood. He snapped his head back in shock, his widened stare meeting her carnivorous gaze, the siren dancing and maniacally laughing in the waves just out of his reach. Jill’s rational side had drowned in the maelstrom some time ago, there was only the wild siren with her irresistible call left over to scowl back at him, and as she reached for his waist, lifted her leg again and ground her damp panties against his boxers, she made her intentions clear as day. 

The beast took the bait, finally charging forward into the waves to meet the siren half way, fueled by rage and the insatiable urge to mate with her. They collided in the water, a hand fisted in her hair and the other firmly grabbed the thigh still wrapped around his hips. Lips found lips, tongues plundered mouths and hips careened together. Jill felt her other foot leave the ground as Carlos carried her over to the vanity and unceremoniously dumped her onto the counter, breaking the kiss for just a moment as she shook off the impact and briefly glanced into obsidian eyes, sharper than a knife. Normally it would’ve been a bit intimidating, but the slithery creature behind her eyes was too keyed up on raw animal attraction to care. The scant fabric of her skirt was shoved up to her belly button, followed by the sound of ripping seams as he tugged the crotch of her panties to the side.

“I’m telling Becca you did that,” she hissed as the ghost of her rational side rose from its watery grave. 

“Run a tab then,” he snarled.

In an instant, his boxers and pants were shoved down his thighs and the head of his aching cock shoved its way past her slick labia. Jill was certainly wet, but this sudden intrusion was still a bit too much. When she gasped and began to whimper, her insatiable lover noticed, and a thumb found its way to his silky tongue before rubbing rapid circles on her clit, his thrusts increasing speed the more she opened up her wet world for him. Before he was all the way in, he jerked her top and bralette up to her collarbone all at once, letting her perky breasts tumble free of their lacey confines and straight into his impish mouth as he worked each nipple in his mouth by turn. Jill threw her head back and moaned toward the ceiling, clenching her pelvic muscles around his cock as he began to fuck her hard enough to send her upper back flying into the mirror behind them, his hand coming up after the very first savage thrust to cradle the back of her head. His body was like a bear trap, fastening onto her from crotch to collarbone. Her legs wrapped around him high enough for her knees to cradle his underarms.

The beast and the siren rolled around to and fro in the waves, threatening to drag one another onto the other’s turf--land vs sea. At one point, she tore the collar of his shirt down and her jaws found his shoulder. This time, she did mean to bruise, to vent her anger and rage on his skin, so she reared back and bit with the same ferocity that previously attacked his bottom lip. Once upon a time, that bite would’ve been out of the question, as it would’ve indicated an infection that destroyed her home and almost ended her life; but in this case, the bite wasn’t born from the basic need to feed. No, this bite was born from the sole need to cause a reaction. However, the reaction she received was unexpected; she expected him to relent and perhaps give back some control, but the beast refused to retract his claws. Instead, once bit, he grabbed her hair by the roots and dragged her lips back to his, furiously biting and sucking on her lower lip. She only growled in response to the feral kiss, and her hands then found their way into his hair, groping at the scalp and freeing the curly strands from their high bun.

Letting the sensation of his angry mouth feed her, she kissed him like her jaws became their own bear trap, their tongues sparring each other in a fierce battle for dominance. Soon, the smell of livid sex and sweat filled the small room as the lovers rapidly began to climb that first crest toward release together. Jill had closed her eyes for quite some time, eventually letting her head lull onto his shoulder while the sinful melody of soaked, pounding flesh and their combined snarls, hisses and moans fed her wild side, when she became vaguely aware of the soulful music from the main room getting a bit louder. Opening her eyes and letting them adjust through the blurry, hazy vision, she focused her attention on the door, which now stood wide open. Her hazy view cleared and she honed in on dark, curly hair atop a tight red dress and matching pumps, finally recognizing Carla standing in the doorway, watching them.

The woman didn’t say a word, she only stood there in the doorway with her hand fastened to the handle and an astonished look on her face. The two of them made eye contact, and when Carlos didn’t stop his wild excursion toward climax, she realized that he wasn’t looking in the mirror and therefore hadn’t caught on to the irony of their new voyeur. Carla’s agape lips trembled like she was about to say something, and that was when the siren bared her teeth in a grimace. If looks could kill, Jill would’ve added one more to her body count, but she settled for a non-verbal threat instead. ‘Yeah, that’s right, he’s with me,’ her cyanide-laced glare seemed to say. ‘Now leave, and don’t fucking let it hit you on the way out.’

Pursing her lips and suddenly glancing toward the floor, Carla gingerly backed up and swung the door closed with a soft click. A sly smile replaced the dangerous look on Jill’s face as she tilted her head back and let her inner walls twitch around her erratic lover, finally tipping over the first crest and plunging down the hill as she noisily rode out her orgasm. The siren celebrated her triumph as she dragged the beast down into the murky depths at last, her orgasm triggering Carlos to follow her into the briny deep, groaning and shuttering as he spilled into her.

……

  * _Update: it didn’t work, she didn’t leave, they’re still here together._


  * _The fuck ya mean it didn’t work?_


  * _She didn’t leave, she went to the restroom, he ran after her._


  * _Well where the fuck are they now?!_


  * _You don’t wanna know._


  * _The hell’s that supposed to mean?_


  * _It means they never left the restroom._


  * _...Of fuckin’ course...figures. Fine then, change of plans, get outta there now and wait for my instructions_



……

About thirty five minutes later, after fixing themselves up and Jill kicking Carlos out of the restroom to use it for real, he had closed out their tab and the sated but sore couple had hailed a taxi back to the apartment. Once they trudged through the door, Jill leaned against the wall while he bent down to help take off her heels. 

“Well, so much for a perfect night, hey hun?” he chuckled, massaging one of her ankles. 

“Babe, ease up on the jokes, will you?” she sighed with her fingers tracing his shirt collar, “it’s been a rough one.” 

A twinge of guilt set in when she eyed the bite mark, tiny crescent shaped indents in his deep caramel skin. For a moment, those marks looked a bit too red, each indent welling up with crimson blood as the skin began to wither and turn gray around the bite. “Hey,” Carlos’ voice stunned her out of her strange reverie, “you ok Jill?”

She shook her head to clear the vile image from her mind, looking back down into her lover’s kind eyes. “Yeah, sorry I--I’m so sorry I hurt you like that,” she lamented.

Carlos simply smirked up at her, massaging the other ankle. “No worries, wouldn’t be my first war wound,” he reassured her.

It didn’t help. The image of how she had cunningly manipulated him before sinking her teeth into his shoulder set up shop in her mind and refused to leave. “I don’t know what came over me,” she said to him, “I was so angry and I...I wanted to punish someone, to punish you.”

Finally pausing his fingers, Carlos sighed and leaned his head against her knee. “Jill, I get it. You were pissed, had every right to be.”

“That was no excuse to manipulate you the way I did,” she protested, gently soothing back his curls. “I wanted you to react, I wanted to fight.”

“Would it help if I said it was pretty hot?” he teased with a raised brow and a half smile.

Jill smiled despite being irritated with herself. “Well, can’t argue with you there.”

Rubbing a thumb on her shin, he glanced up and came up with a compromise. “How ‘bout this: from now on, rough sex is still in, but using sex as a weapon is out. I have to admit, I was kinda pissed after you did that.” His pensive look quickly switched to concern. “Hope I wasn’t too rough back there; did I hurt your arm? How’s your head?” 

Jill smiled and shook her head. Some things never changed, including her protective Wonder Boy...or should she say Wonder Man now. “I’m fine,” she reassured him, “in fact I’m great, I still had a fun time.”

A kiss to her knee and Carlos resumed rubbing her ankle. “Awesome. Then how about this: no more manipulation, alright? Especially when it comes to sex, whaddayasay?”

“Agreed,” Jill quickly accepted. “Although,” her smile swiftly fled before her next question, “can I ask you something?” 

Carlos easily stood to his full height, his features curious and gentle and yet she still felt a bit intimidated at the thought of asking him this next thing. “Sure, ask me anything,” he replied.

Glancing down toward his chest, she thought back to the burning question on her mind while she had been too angry for rational thought. “When Carla said you asked if you could call her Jill before you slept together, is that true?” she anxiously asked.

He exhaled nasally and lifted both her hands into his. “So that’s what’s buggin’ you huh? Honestly, those words were said, but Carla was the one that suggested it in the first place--that’s how she seduced me.” 

One part of the case solved, Jill then slid her eyes up to ask what was no doubt making her the most apprehensive. “She reminded you of me, didn’t she? Was it, like a role play thing?”

Talking about Carla was the last thing on his mind after she had almost ruined their night, but hiding things had already come back to bite Carlos in the ass; therefore, he decided to nip it in the bud once and for all. A hand came up to her chin, and sweet maple hardened into smoky quartz faster than she could blink her eyes. “If you really wanna know, alright, no more hiding anything. When I first saw her, I saw your eyes. Same shape, same color, and when the liquor really hit by the time I walked her back to her place, those eyes were the only things I saw.” He then stepped impossibly closer while wrapping his arms around her, his eyes hard but expression soft. “Every time she moaned, every time she screamed my name that night, I heard your voice. Her hands were your hands, lips were your lips, and when I woke up and didn’t see your face, I panicked. Felt like I was dreaming all night, that you finally came back to me. Then in the morning, it was like a waking nightmare.”

The air left the room like the vents became vacuums. His arms had cradled her countless times but she still felt caged in, like an invisible force field had wrapped itself over her skin, both suffocating and splendid somehow. “Jill I chose you, chose us a long time ago, but a long time ago might as well have been yesterday, because my feelings for you haven’t changed. I can only apologize enough without it sounding like bullshit, and I know the timing of all this is terrible, but if you’ll still have me, I _promise_ not to let you down again. I’ll do whatever you decide, ball’s in your court.”

It was impossible to miss the earnest determination in his eyes, a man who knew exactly what he wanted and yet still respected her choice if she wanted something different. Their carnival ride relationship had its bumps, twists and turns over the years, yet despite how they had changed, their love had persevered. Jill told him that they should take things slow, ease their way back onto that ride, yet a part of her knew from the minute she ran into his arms, her mind was already made up. Even after Carlos finally confessed about Carla, instead of pushing him away, her instinctual reaction was to reel him in closer. Maybe it was out of fear--the fear of losing control or losing what they have. However, as self awareness highlighted this dilemma, it made her realize how unfounded that fear was. There was no way in hell that he was going anywhere unless she wanted him to, and Carla didn't matter, because no matter what life threw at them, they both kept choosing each other. This intense love confession aside, it had only been about two weeks and yet she couldn’t picture him going back to Brazil and leaving her alone. No, the tether, the invisible link between them was just as strong as it had been when they first met, perhaps it always would be; therefore, that was something she shouldn’t fear losing, because it was already theirs from the start. 

Jill brought her hands up to cup his face, gently tilting his head down until their foreheads touched. “Thanks for telling me, albeit a little late,” she whispered. 

“Better late than never, right?” he rumbled back with a smile.

The lovers shared a passionate, lazy kiss, followed by a déjà vu moment of closed eyes and touching foreheads, letting their body language convey their feelings without saying a word. For a moment, they were back in their old place, huddled up in the entryway and unprepared to say goodbye; yet, goodbye had come anyway, and it had stayed for three years. Fortunately, hello had returned, and so did the mannerisms and moments they had shared countless times. Like clockwork, they said “I love you” in unison. Their eyes slowly opened and they regarded each other, following up their affectionate admissions with, “I said it first.” Light, easy chuckles ensued, and their foreheads then found the crooks of each other’s necks. They stayed like that for a while longer, suspended in recollection and warm memories, before Carlos scooped her up under her bottom and carried her--giggling and nipping at his ear--to bed. Then, they yanked off their clothing and he removed most of her lingerie with his teeth as she had so boldly suggested earlier that evening, taking his sweet time with those incredibly sexy thigh highs…

The next morning, the pair had just begun to stir when there was a knock at the front door. Barely turning her head away from the bend of Carlos’ shoulder to glance at the alarm clock, Jill crankily murmured, “This early, ‘s probably a neighbor asking for a favor.” 

“You know you just rhymed, right babe?” Carlos teased as he lazily smiled over at her. 

Jill was about to respond with a smartass remark of her own, when suddenly, the knocking turned into a loud pounding noise. This got their full attention, and they cast suspicious glances toward each other as they each sat up in the tangle of messy sheets. “The hell?” Carlos said as he shook off his grogginess, gingerly easing Jill out of his embrace to rise and nab his boxers from the floor. As he cautiously made his way into the next room, Jill grabbed his button down and hastily fastened just enough buttons to cover most of her front before joining him. On the floor just past the mail slot was a plain white envelope. Carlos was the first to reach for it, picking it up and handing it to her without glancing at the front. “You expecting any messages hun?” Carlos asked.

“No,” Jill answered as she accepted the envelope from him. Flipping it onto its front, she noticed that it had no writing on it: no names, no return address, not even a stamp. “That’s odd,” she murmured, slipping a finger under the flap and opening the ambiguous delivery. Carlos went to the door and unlocked it, leaning his head just past the door way when he didn’t see anyone standing on the other side. “How’s this for odd,” he tossed back over his shoulder, “whoever they are, they took off.” 

After closing and relocking the door, Carlos went over to Jill and peered over her shoulder at the contents of the envelope, an 8x11 printed version of a photograph. As recognition seeped in, the room spun around him... _lying naked on her side, her sex tousled hair cradling her face and shoulders, an arm draped across her breasts and the sheets exposing her bare bottom and beautiful legs..._

“Babe, is...is this me?” Jill asked as her confusion rose along with a sense of foreboding. That sense of foreboding only grew as she looked over her shoulder at his petrified face. “Whoa, Carlos what’s wrong?” 

The candid photo had only ever existed in two different places: first on his phone when he took the shot, and then on his laptop when he transferred all of his old photos into a private, encrypted file. There was no way that anyone could’ve gotten their hands on the photo, unless…

“My laptop,” he said a bit too quietly, “I left it in my room. That’s where the picture is. I took it the night before you left.”

““Who else has access to your computer?” Jill asked, frowning down at the photo. 

“No one, only I have the password,” he assured her. 

Immediately switching to cop mode, Jill marched over to a kitchen cabinet and grabbed a Zip-lock bag. “Call your family right now,” she ordered as she slipped the photo and envelope into the plastic, “tell Luiz to go and get your mom as soon as possible, and tell her to pack a bag and not come back to the house until it’s clear.” 

Without another word, Carlos went into the bedroom to grab his cell and dial his brother while Jill placed the baggie on the counter before calling local PD. As innocuous as the photo appeared to be, from his reaction, there was no mistaking that it was meant to be some sort of threat, and this threat knew where she, and possibly Carlos’ family, lived. Carla had been a nuisance; this new threat however, was another life altering event just waiting to happen, one that the lovers didn’t need so soon after the hell they had already lived through. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *This chapter was inspired by two things: 1. SOA, loved that show, 2. Jill Scott’s “Gettin’ In the Way”, if ya know ya know ;-)


End file.
